Sandstone Health Care Center

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this nursing home excelled in our nursing category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A for that category. Nursing scores are largely tied to the facility's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed very well in terms of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

In addition, this nursing home also earned a nearly flawless inspection report. As a result, it earned one of our highest grades in that area with a score of A. Our inspection grades are tied to many items found on the a nursing home's inspections. Facilities that excel in this area have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these places should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. While this facility had some deficiencies on its report, none were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspections are uncommon in the industry.

Additionally, this nursing home also was given favorable long-term care scores in our assessment. In fact, we awarded it one of our stronger grades in that category, with a score of B. Nursing homes that receive this kind of score in this category tend to provide consistent around the clock care to ensure residents are well cared for. After assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 96.503494 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is more than most nursing homes. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The final category we assessed was short-term care. We gave this nursing home an acceptable score in this area, with a grade of B-. Even though this wasn't on par with several of this facility's other scores, it is nevertheless a middle of the pack score. In calculating our short-term care scores, we size up a nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. This area is typically a meaningful measure of a facility's rehabilitation. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last datapoint we considered in this category is the percentage of residents who returned home from the facility. We found that just 4.3 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home. Unfortunately, this was below average.