Sandy Health and Rehab

Although we gave this facility a terrible overall grade, we awarded it a grade of B- for our nursing rating. When determining a facility's nursing score, we look at the number of hours nurses commit to residents and the skill levels of the nurses. This nursing home averages 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis, which is a very low figure. Lastly, nursing grades also consider quality-based metrics, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours per resident, this place performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is typically a reliable indicator that a place has sufficient quality controls in place. Some falls could be avoided if a facility supplies enough nurses to assist its patients.

This facility also didn't perform poorly in the area of short-term care. In fact, we awarded it a grade of B- for that area, which ended up being another one of its more favorable scores. Short-term care grades are generally used to measure a facility's rehabilitation services. To offer highly rated rehabilitation services, facilities generally must feature higher levels of highly skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. Unfortunately, this facility was below average in terms of its number of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its patients based on the measures we assessed. The last metric we considered in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We discovered that just 5.5 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is below average.

This nursing home received really weak inspection reports in recent years, causing us to give them a lowly F for inspections. An F in this area is usually a signal that there were red flags on the facility's government inspections. When a facility has this bad of an inspection rating, you should look for severe deficiencies on its inspection report. Severe deficiencies indicate a threat to the well being of residents. This particular nursing home was hit with 4 deficiencies by CMS. The only positive thing we found is that none of its deficiencies were in the categories that suggest that they created a risk to patient health or safety. Finally, CMS flagged this nursing home for possible abuse or neglect. This is not what you want to see. We advise you to direct your search elsewhere.

The next area we rated is long-term care. Sadly, it received an F in this area, which is a poor score. For long-term care residents, the facility's primary goal is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. One of the criteria we considered on top of nurse's aid hours was vaccinations. Fortunately, this facility provided the pneumonia vaccine to 96.10779 percent of its patients. Surprisingly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this nursing home had fewer hospitalizations than most nursing homes. Unfortunately, a few of its other scores in the category were not as favorable as these.