Jacob's Creek Nursing and Rehabilitation Center

Although we were not high on this place's overall performance, it actually received an impressive inspection report this year with few dings from the applicable government inspectors. As a result, it received one of our better grades in that area with a B+. Inspection scores account for a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. You generally want to avoid facilities with too many deficiencies flagged. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This means that CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A couple minor deficiencies are not necessarily the end of the world.

This facilities next best area is short-term care. We gave it a grade of C in this category. This is basically a slightly below average score in this area. In calculating our short-term care ratings, we size up the nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other types of therapists. This area is typically a useful measure of a nursing home's rehabilitation. We were surprised to find that this nursing home was below average in the two key staffing areas we focus on. The facility supplied fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most other nursing homes. It is still important to determine whether this also correlates to a lower quality of care. Finally, we considered the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most nursing homes, closer to half of their patients are able to return home so this figure is below average.

This nursing home wound up receiving a rock-bottom score in our long-term care area. It was given an F in this area. For prospective patients in need of a permanent place to live rather than rehabilitation, long-term care grades are very important. On top of looking at the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. Fortunately, this facility provided the vaccine to 98.949585 percent of its residents, which is a very respectable figure. To our surprise, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility has less hospitalizations than most nursing homes. Sadly, a few of its other scores in this category weren't as favorable as these.

Switching gears to our fourth category, this nursing home really did not fare well in this category either. Due to a very poor grade of F in nursing, this is really as as uninspiring as it gets. When computing a facility's nursing grade, we look at the amount of time nurses are with residents and the level of licensure of those nurses. This facility averaged a meager 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This is an alarmingly low total. To go along with its subpar totals in the area of nursing hours per patient, this place also didn't fare as well in the quality-based measures we looked at in calculating our nursing ratings. We looked at the percent of patients sustaining major falls and pressure ulcers. This facility had more pressure ulcers and falls than the average nursing home.