Otterbein Portage Valley

The main reason this ended up being a decent nursing home is that it earned an excellent inspection grade. Its inspection grade was far superior to its overall score. In our inspections category, we gave it an A. Arguably the most significant factor we look at in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Places with higher grades in this category most likely avoided the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. While this place had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This tells you that the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in this industry.

Another one of this facility's more favorable category grades was in the category of short-term care. In that area, we awarded this nursing home a B. With our short-term care rating, we strive to create a meaningful measure for rehabilitation services. In doing so, we analyze the nursing home's level of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final item we looked at in this area is the percentage of residents that eventually returned home from the facility. We found that 5.4 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

This nursing home's next best category was nursing. We awarded it a grade of B- in this category. This is basically a middle of the road grade in this category. Our nursing rating considers a number of datapoints. The most heavily weighted factor is the amount of time nurses spent with patients. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This figure is far below the national average. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this nursing home fared better in some of the quality measures we assessed. It scored well in terms of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is every bit as important as the number of hours of care provided.

The next category we graded is long-term care, turned out to be this nursing home's worst area. We gave this facility a D in this category. This really was one of the few weak links on an otherwise strong profile. For prospective residents in need of a permanent residence rather than skilled nursing, long-term care grades are an important measure. After looking at the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 98.36066 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is higher than the majority of nursing homes. Surprisingly, this place also fared well at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. Unfortunately, a few of its other scores in the category were not as favorable as these.