Poplar Springs Nursing Center

In addition to being an elite nursing home overall, this facility also performed well in the area of inspections, where it received an A+. Few places fared this well in this area. Perhaps the most critical factor we look at in calculating our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Nursing homes with better grades in this area typically dodged the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. We weren't able to track down information about this nursing home's deficiencies. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its strong resume, this facility also received a strong long-term care grade, with a grade of A. Nursing homes that do well in long-term care typically provide residents with better supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. In addition to looking at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 96.5625 percent of its patients, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia is too frequently a deadly health condition for nursing home residents so we like it when a facility does not leave this to chance. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This nursing home received a favorable short-term care score as well. We gave it one of our better grades in that category with a score of B. In our short-term care score, we strive to craft a valuable measure for rehabilitation services. In this process, we assess the nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final statistic we looked at in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

The next area we rated was nursing, in which this nursing home received a B-. Although this turned out to be its lowest category rating, this is nevertheless not a terrible score. When calculating a nursing home's nursing rating, we assess the number of hours nurses are caring for patients and the level of skill of those nurses. This place averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient per day, which is not an impressive total. Lastly, our nursing grades also factor in some quality-focused measures. We like to look at the percent of patients who suffered pressure ulcers and major falls. These statistics are decent measures of the quality of nursing care, since better care can reduce these issues.