Embassy of Pickerington

While we were not high on this nursing home's overall grade, it received a very impressive inspection report this year. In fact, it received an excellent inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our best scores in that category with an A-. Perhaps the most critical factor we look at in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a facility's inspection reports. It is generally best to avoid places that have a long list of severe deficiencies. This place was assessed 6 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered to be severe. This tells you that the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies to be an immediate threat to resident health or safety. A few minor deficiencies are not necessarily the end of the world.

We awarded this facility a grade of just D for our short-term care rating and that actually ended up being its next most favorable score. Our short-term care grades are probably more critical for patients requiring rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation generally requires additional highly-skilled nursing services. This includes not merely nursing, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Not surprisingly, we found that this nursing home provides far less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. The last measure we looked at in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 4.9 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these subpar metrics sunk this facility's short-term care score.

This facility's next best category was nursing, but even there it received a grade of just D. This is still a well below average grade. We assessed the licensure of nurses at the facility, in addition to the quantity of hours those nurses were with patients, in computing our score in this category. This facility provided only 0.5 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This is not a very impressive figure. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed well when it comes to avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers.

Moving on to our final category, this facility did not fare well here either. With a bottom of the barrel grade of F in long-term care, this is really as bad as it gets. Long-term care ratings in this range generally are a bad sign for the quantity and quality of care provided by nurses and aids. On top of looking at the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. We discovered that this nursing home administered the vaccine to only 90.495865 percent of its patients, which is several points lower than we expected. Surprisingly, this place was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.03 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility had less hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes. This was its best score in this category.