Otterbein Springboro

This nursing home received a solid overall grade as described above, but we really wanted to point out its excellent health inspections in recent years. We gave them an A- in this category. Arguably the most significant factor we look at in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places with better scores in this area most likely dodged the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. While this place had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are 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 safety or health. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in the industry.

Additionally, we also wanted to point out that this facility was given favorable long-term care marks this year. We gave them one of our more impressive grades in that area, with a B. This proved to be the facility's second strongest score. Long-term care grades of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia tragically can be a life or death health condition for nursing home patients so we prefer when a facility doesn't leave its residents vulnerable. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.04 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This nursing home's next best category ended up being short-term care. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of B-. Our short-term care scores are probably most important for patients needing rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation generally mandates more highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes not just nursing, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final item we looked at in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We discovered that just 5.3 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is below average.

Turning to the fourth area, this nursing home received a grade of B- for nursing, which is a respectable score. We scrutinized the skill-level of nurses working for the facility, as well as the quantity of hours those nurses were with patients, in calculating our rating in this category. This nursing home averages just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this place actually fared better in some of the quality measures we assessed. It scored well in the area of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be measures of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is just as important as the number of hours of care offered.