Ivy Woods Care Center

Ivy Woods Care Center is located in the large metropolitan area of Cincinnati, Ohio. With an overall grade of D, this is a relatively poor nursing home. Cincinnati received a city grade of B-, so there are other options in the city worth considering. If you aren't deterred by this facility's report card, you can continue reading to find out about its category scores. Inspection reports are discussed in the next paragraph.

While this nursing home's overall grade was not a highlight, it actually really excelled in the category of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A- for that area, which is one of our highest scores. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining these inspection scores. One key factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some are quite insignificant. While this nursing home had some deficiencies on its report, none of them were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. A few minor deficiencies are not necessarily the end of the world.

We also want to point out that this facility received a decent grade in our nursing category. We awarded it a grade of C in the area. Nursing ratings are tied to quantity of nursing care available. This nursing home averages 3.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based metrics, such as minimizing major falls. This nursing home performed admirably in this area. Avoiding serious falls is usually a good indicator that a facility has quality controls in place. Some falls can be prevented if a facility offers enough nurses aids to assist its residents.

Sadly, this nursing home's next highest category was long-term care. As it turns out, with a grade of D in this category, it still fared somewhat badly. For patients looking for a permanent residence rather than rehabilitation, long-term care grades are very important. Once we assessed the amount of care provided by nurses, we next considered the facility's vaccination record. We were optimistic to discover that this nursing home vaccinates 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia. To our surprise, this place was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 1.25 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. Sadly, some of its other scores in this category weren't as favorable as these.

The last category we scored was short-term care. This nursing home was given a very poor grade of F in this category. With our short-term care category, we endeavor to craft a valuable gauge for rehabilitation. In this process, we assess the facility's level of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. With its abysmal grade in this area, we weren't stunned to learn that this nursing home provided far fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than most other nursing homes. The last metric we considered in this category is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 35.6 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these subpar statistics sunk this facility's short-term care grade.