Otterbein Gahanna

This facility's best category grade came in our short-term care rating. In that category, we awarded this facility a B+. Our short-term care ratings are probably more important for those requiring rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation typically requires additional skilled nursing services. This includes not just nursing, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of residents that ultimately returned home from this nursing home. We found that 6.9 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

This facility's inspection score exceeded its overall grade as well. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a B. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining our inspection scores. One key factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some of these end up being relatively minor. This place was hit with 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This tells you that CMS did not consider any of these deficiencies to cause an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspections are uncommon in this industry.

The next highest grade we gave this nursing home in any area came in the category of nursing, where we gave it a grade of B-. In determining our nursing scores, we analyze both the number of hours nurses spend with residents and the training levels of the nurses. This particular nursing home provided just 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident daily. This figure is far below the national average. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this nursing home actually fared better in some of the quality measures we looked at. In fact, it performed well in terms of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good measures of the quality of nursing care. In many cases, the quality of nursing care is just as important as the quantity of hours of care provided.

The next category we looked at is long-term care. We awarded it a grade of C in that area. This is a decent grade in this category. Long-term care grades are generally used to measure a facility's performance as a traditional convalescent home, as opposed to focusing more on the skilled nursing services provided by a rehabilitation facility. On top of looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 99.31973 percent of its patients, which is more than the average nursing home. Finally, this nursing home was also able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.