Sandstone Heights

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this facility also received an excellent long-term care score, with a grade of A. For patients seeking a permanent residence as opposed to skilled nursing, long-term care is a very important category. Once we looked at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 88.541664 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is a bit below what we expected but still a decent percentage. While its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we hoped for, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This nursing home also received a very impressive nursing grade. In fact, this turned out to be its second best category grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A. Our nursing rating assesses the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We look at both the levels of training of those nurses as well as the quantity of hours spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by having a policy of moving a resident at least once a day.

Racking up yet another strong category grade, this facility also excelled in the area of inspections, where it earned an A. Inspection ratings weigh several factors, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these factors by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Switching gears to the final category, this nursing home received an excellent short-term care grade. We gave it a grade of A- in this area, resulting in this facility receiving straight A's. In computing our short-term care scores, we analyze the nursing home's levels of skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other licensed professionals. This score is typically a solid measure of a facility's ability to rehabilitate patients. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the number of residents who returned home from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home.