Sandy Lake Rehabilitation and Care Center

This nursing home received an impressive short-term care score this year. We gave it a B+ in this category. In computing our short-term care ratings, we analyze the facility's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other highly skilled individuals. This rating is frequently a meaningful measure of a facility's ability to rehabilitate patients. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final measure we considered in this area is the percentage of patients who eventually returned home from the nursing home. We found that 5.9 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

Surprisingly, this facility actually received an impressive nursing grade this year as well. We gave it a grade of B in this category. Nursing scores are mostly based on the facility's level of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.3 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 offering better nursing care, such as by having a system of moving patients more frequently.

Unfortunately, with a grade of D in the inspection category, this facility performed relatively poorly in that area. One of the more significant factors in assessing an inspection report is deficiencies. We suggest you scrutinize the level of severity of the deficiencies. This nursing home was assessed 5 deficiencies by government inspectors. The only positive thing we found is that none of its deficiencies were in the categories that suggest they posed a risk to patient health or safety. Finally, we want to draw your attention to the fact that this place received large government fines recently amounting to more than $100,000. This usually signifies that a nursing home's poor track record spanned multiple years.

The final area we graded was long-term care, where this facility received a bottom of the barrel score here as well. We gave it a lowly F in this category, which is obviously a major concern. In a long-term care environment, the facility's primary goal is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. After considering the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination record. We were pleased to discover that this facility vaccinated 97.70992 percent of its patients against pneumonia. To our surprise, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility has fewer hospitalizations than most nursing homes. Sadly, a few of its other scores in the category were not as favorable as these.