Otterbein Union Township

Although we didn't grade this facility favorably overall, we did give it an excellent grade in the area of inspections, where it received an A. Perhaps the most important factor we consider in calculating our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a facility's recent inspection reports. It is generally in your best interest to avoid nursing homes that have too many deficiencies. This place was hit with 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered to be major deficiencies. This indicates that CMS didn't deem any of these deficiencies to pose an imminent threat to resident health or safety. A couple minor deficiencies are not the end of the world.

This nursing home's second best area was short-term care. We gave it a C in this area. This is essentially a middle of the pack grade in this area. Our short-term care scores are probably more critical for folks needing a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates more skilled nursing services. This includes not just nursing, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. We found that this nursing home was below average in the two key staffing areas we looked at. In fact, it provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other nursing homes. It is still important to determine whether this also correlates to a lower quality of care. The last datapoint we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We discovered that just 5.4 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is actually below average.

Unfortunately, this nursing home's third highest score is long-term care. However, with a grade of D in this area, it still fared somewhat poorly. In a long-term care setting, the primary objective is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. On top of looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 97.63314 percent of its patients, which is more than the majority of nursing homes. To our surprise, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility has fewer hospitalizations than the average nursing home. Unfortunately, some of its other scores in this category were not as favorable as these.

The last area we graded is nursing. This facility received a very poor grade of F in that category. When calculating a facility's nursing grade, we assess the number of hours nurses spend with patients and the level of skill of the nurses. This nursing home provided a meager 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient per day. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing grades. This place fared well when it comes to minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls.