Hirest Shadow Lake

To pair with its decent overall grade, we awarded this nursing home an A for our inspections rating. This is far more impressive than the facility's overall score. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in calculating these inspection grades. One critical factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being relatively minor. Fortunately, although this nursing home had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This tells you that CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A couple minor deficiencies should not lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

We also awarded this facility a solid score in the category of short-term care, where it received a grade of C. In the area of short-term care, we endeavor to qualify indicators of a facility's rehabilitation services. We analyze a facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical therapists. Unfortunately, we found that this facility provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other nursing homes. The more important thing is determining what effect this had on quality of care. The last item we considered in this area is the percentage of residents that eventually returned home from the nursing home. We found that just 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

The next area we analyzed was long-term care, where this facility received a C in this area. Long-term care grades are often used to assess a nursing home's performance as a traditional nursing home, as opposed to focusing on the skilled nursing services provided by a skilled nursing facility. After looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination statistics. We were a bit concerned this nursing home vaccinated 63.709675 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which happens to be quite a bit below average. Nevertheless, this nursing home excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The final area we assessed was nursing, which turned out to be this facility's weakest area. We awarded this nursing home a grade of D in that category. In determining a nursing home's nursing score, we weigh the quantity of hours nurses commit to residents and the level of skill of those nurses. This nursing home offered a meager 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient per day. This figure is far below the national average. On top of rating below average in nursing hours per resident, this facility also had poor scores in the quality-based metrics we looked at in calculating our nursing scores. We looked at the percentage of patients experiencing pressure ulcers and major falls. This nursing home was at roughly 150 percent of the national average in both of these statistics. This is likely a bad sign when you consider that many falls and bed sores are preventable with better nursing care. These scores pulled down this nursing home's nursing grade quite a bit.