Homewood at Plum Creek

While this nursing home's overall grade was decent, it really excelled in the area of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A+ for that category, which is one of our best scores. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating our inspection scores. One of those factors is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some end up being relatively minor. 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.

We also awarded this nursing home a strong grade in long-term care. This facility received a grade of B in this area, which turns out to be one of our more favorable scores. When facilities receive this kind of grade in long-term care it is typically a good sign for patient care and suggests that the nursing home is well-staffed with nurses and aids. After considering the volume of nursing care, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is very impressive. Pneumonia sadly is often a dangerous ailment for nursing home residents so we prefer when a nursing home doesn't roll the dice on this issue. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 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-. Nursing scores are based in large part on levels of nurse staffing. This place averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient daily, which is not an impressive total. Lastly, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics. While this nursing home got docked a bit for nursing hours, it excelled in a few of these quality-based measures. With fewer than five percent of its patients experiencing pressure ulcers, it did very well in this metric. This can be a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of moving residents at least once a day.

The final category we looked at is short-term care, which ended up being this facility's worst area. We gave this facility a D in that area. Naturally, this grade hurt the nursing home's overall grade a bit. Short-term care ratings are vital for prospective residents in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually mandates higher levels of highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes a vast spectrum of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Unfortunately, this nursing home was below average in terms of its quantity of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its residents based on the measures we assessed. Finally, we looked at the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. This definitely was not a strength for this facility. We found that just 2.6 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home. At most facilities, around half of their patients are able to return home so this is well below average.