Gwynedd Healthcare and Rehabilitation Center

One of the reasons this place is a quality facility is that it earned a very impressive inspection rating. Inspections turned out to be its best category grade. In that area, we gave it an A+. These inspection ratings weigh several factors, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these items by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. While this facility had a few deficiencies on its report, none were serious based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Among the reasons we graded this facility so highly is that it was given a dominant long-term care grade. Indeed, long-term care ended up being its second best category grade. In that area, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A-. Facilities that receive this kind of score in long-term care tend to provide consistent around the clock care to ensure residents are kept in good health. Once we assessed the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 83.84354 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is a few points less than we expected but still a reasonably acceptable percentage. Although its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we like to see, we were pleased to find nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

The next highest grade we gave this nursing home came in the category of nursing, where we gave it a grade of C. This wasn't quite as good as some of its other scores, but a grade in this range is not the end of the world. The nursing score analyzes quite a few factors, however, the most important consideration is the level of nurse hours per patient per week. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident daily. This figure is significantly below average. Finally, nursing grades also consider quality-based assessments, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours per resident, this nursing home performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is generally a reliable indicator that a facility has sufficient quality controls in place. Some falls can be avoided if a nursing home supplies enough nurses to assist its patients.

The final category we analyzed is short-term care. We awarded this facility a grade of D for the area of short-term care, rendering this the facility's least impressive area. Short-term care grades are based on the facility's quantity of highly-skilled nursing services. This includes a vast scope of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other types of therapy. In this nursing home's case, it looks like it offers less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than a typical facility. The last datapoint we assessed in this category is the number of residents who eventually returned home from the facility. This nursing home struggled quite a bit in this metric as well, with just 4.6 percent of its patients returning home.