Sandwich Rehabilitation & Health Care Center

In addition to being a respectable facility overall, this place also excelled in the category of inspections, where it earned a grade of A-. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating these inspection grades. One key factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these end up being quite insignificant. Fortunately, although this place had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that the inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A couple of minor deficiencies shouldn't lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

We also gave this nursing home a decent score in the category of nursing care, with a grade of B-. In computing a nursing home's nursing grade, we consider the number of hours nurses are caring for patients as well as the level of skill of the nurses. This nursing home averages 3.7 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as minimizing major falls. This facility performed admirably in this statistic. Avoiding major falls is generally a good indicator that a facility has quality controls in place. Many falls can be prevented if a facility provides enough nurses aids to assist its patients.

This nursing home's next most favorable area turned out to be short-term care. In that area, we awarded this nursing home a grade of C. In computing these short-term care scores, we analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The purpose is to create a barometer for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. This nursing home elevated its grade in this category by offering more care from registered nurses to its residents than the average facility. The last measure we considered in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is below average.

The next area we rated is long-term care. We gave it a lowly F in this area, which is a very poor grade. This is obviously a major concern. Nursing homes that don't score well in this category often don't provide as much nursing care and also may be lagging in some of the areas of routine medical care we looked at. Once we assessed the quantity of nursing care, we next considered the facility's vaccination record. Frankly, we were a bit alarmed this facility vaccinated only 83.90804 percent of its patients for pneumonia. Surprisingly, this facility was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.76 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility had fewer hospitalizations than the average nursing home. This is its best score in this category.