Rae Ann Suburban

We want to point out that this nursing home really outperformed its overall grade in the category of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, we gave it one of our highest scores in that area with an A. Our inspection grades weigh several factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we look at is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher scores in this area tend to have very few of these severe deficiencies. While this nursing home had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A couple of minor deficiencies shouldn't stop you from considering a nursing home.

One of this facility's higher category grades came in the category of long-term care. This ended up being its second best category. In that category, we gave this nursing home a C. For patients seeking a permanent place to live as opposed to rehabilitation, long-term care is a very important category. One of the factors we considered in addition to nurse's aid hours was vaccinations. Candidly, we were a bit alarmed this facility administered the pneumonia vaccine to a relatively low 87.57397 percent of its patients. Nevertheless, this facility excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

One of this facility's better category grades was in the area of nursing care. In that area, we gave this facility a grade of C. In computing a facility's nursing score, we assess the number of hours nurses are caring for residents and the skill levels of those nurses. This nursing home provides only 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This is a somewhat alarming figure which is well below average. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this place actually excelled in some of the quality-based metrics we looked at. In fact, it performed well when it comes to minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is every bit as important as the quantity of hours of care offered.

Our next category is short-term care, where we gave this nursing home a C in that area. In crafting these short-term care grades, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The objective is to devise a scale for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different facilities. We found that this place was below average in the two key staffing areas we focus on. The facility provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. It is important to determine whether this is adversely impacting the quality of care. The last item we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients that ultimately returned home from the facility. We found that just 4.8 percent of this facility's residents returned home.