Otterbein Loveland

The primary reason this turned out to be a decent nursing home is that it earned an elite inspection grade. Its inspection grade was far superior to its overall score. In the inspections category, we gave it a grade of A-. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining our inspection ratings. One critical factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is usually more important than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being quite insignificant. Although this place had a few deficiencies on its report, none of them were serious based on CMS' scale. Remember that deficiency-free inspections are uncommon in the industry.

One of the other reasons we rated this facility so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this nursing home a grade of B-. Our nursing grade consists of many subcategories, most of which are based on quantities of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this facility actually fared better in some of the quality measures we looked at. It performed well in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care. In many cases, the quality of nursing care is every bit as important as the number of hours of care provided.

The third best area we awarded this facility in any area came in the area of long-term care, where we awarded it a grade of B-. For long-term care residents, the nursing home's primary objective is to maintain residents' quality of life and keep them safe. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. Fortunately, this facility administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is a very respectable figure. This nursing home was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Our final category is short-term care, where we gave this nursing home a B- in that category. Our short-term care ratings are considered to be most important for people in need of rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation generally utilizes higher levels of skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not merely nursing, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 4.5 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most facilities, closer to half of their patients are able to return home so this figure is below average.