Green Meadows Skilled Nursing and Rehab

On top of performing well in its overall grade, this facility performed at an even higher level in the area of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A. Inspection grades account for a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One key criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with better scores in this area generally have very few of these severe deficiencies. While this facility had a few minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G through L. This tells you the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. We should point out that deficiency-free inspections are rare in the industry.

An additional quality feature for this facility is that it was given a very positive long-term care score. Indeed, this proved to be its second best category grade. In that category, we gave this facility a B. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in this category it typically means it has plenty of staff and is an overall good place to reside on a permanent basis. After we finished looking at the volume of care provided by nurses, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is very impressive. Pneumonia sadly can be a life or death illness for nursing home patients so we prefer when a facility does not roll the dice on this issue. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This facility's next best category was its nursing grade, where it received a grade of B-. While this didn't quite match its scores in some of the categories discussed above, this is still a decent score. Our nursing rating includes several factors, but the most important consideration is the quantity of nurse hours per patient per week. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this nursing home fared better in some of the quality-based metrics we assessed. In fact, it scored well in the area of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be indicators of the quality of nursing care. In many cases, the quality of nursing care is just as important as the quantity of hours of care provided.

Our last area is short-term care, in which we awarded this facility a grade of B- in that area. In calculating our short-term care ratings, we assess the facility's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other licensed professionals. This area is generally a useful measure of the facility's ability to rehabilitate patients. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final metric we assessed in this category is the number of patients that returned home from the facility. We found that just 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home.