AHC Meadowbrook

In addition to being a strong facility overall, it also earned A+ government inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. Arguably the most important factor we look at in determining our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Nursing homes with better scores in this area typically dodged the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its profile, this nursing home also received a score of B+ for its long-term care rating. This is an above average grade in this area. Nursing homes that receive this type of grade in this category tend to provide consistent around the clock care to make sure patients are well cared for. In addition to assessing the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 98.33333 percent of its patients, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia sadly can be a life threatening condition for nursing home patients so we strongly prefer when a nursing home does not take any chances. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The third category we analyzed is short-term care. This facility was given an above average short-term care grade, with a grade of B+ in this area. Our short-term care grades are thought to be more meaningful for patients in need of rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation typically utilizes additional skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes not just nursing, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final item we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients that eventually returned home from the nursing home. We found that 6 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

Turning to our next area, this facility was given a decent nursing grade. Although this isn't nearly as impressive as several of its other grades, this is still not the end of the world. The nursing grade considers numerous data points. The most heavily weighted variable is the number of hours nurses spent with residents. This facility provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis. This is a relatively low total compared with most other facilities. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this nursing home actually fared better in some of the quality-based metrics we looked at. It performed well when it comes to avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these areas to be indicators of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is as important as the number of hours of care offered.