Homewood at Plum Creek

One of the reasons this ended up being a quality facility is that it earned a very impressive inspection score. In fact, inspections turned out to be its best category grade. In this area, we awarded it a grade of A+. Perhaps the most important factor we look at in calculating our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with better scores in this area most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

Contributing to its profile, this nursing home also earned a grade of B for its long-term care rating. This is an above average grade in this category. When nursing homes receive this type of score in long-term care it is a good sign for patient care and indicates that the nursing home is well-staffed with nurses aids. After looking at the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is significantly higher than the average nursing home. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This facility's next best category grade came in the area of nursing. In that category, we gave this nursing home a grade of B-. This wasn't quite on par with some of its other category grades mentioned above. There are a variety of factors included in this category. Most of these criteria are tied to staffing levels. This facility provides only 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident daily. This is a somewhat alarming figure which is well below average. Lastly, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based metrics, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours, this nursing home performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is typically a good indicator that a facility has quality controls in place. Some falls could be avoided if a nursing home provides enough nurses aids to assist its patients.

The last category we scored is short-term care. We gave it a grade of B- in this category. This is a fair grade in this category. With our short-term care grade, we seek to forge a sound measure for rehabilitation services. In this process, we analyze the facility's offerings of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last item we considered in this area is the percentage of residents that were able to return home from the facility. We found that just 4.5 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.