Sandy River Center

This facility really excelled in our short-term care rating. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A- for that category, which is one of our highest scores. This really boosted its overall profile. Our short-term care grades are likely more critical for individuals needing rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation generally utilizes higher levels of highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes not merely nursing, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of patients who returned home from this nursing home. We found that 5.9 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.

In addition, this facility also excelled in the area of inspections, where it earned a grade of A-. Few nursing homes performed better in this category. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in calculating our inspection ratings. One key factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies are quite insignificant. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you 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. We should point out that deficiency-free inspections are uncommon in the industry.

Next, we looked at the nursing category where we awarded this nursing home a grade of B-, which is a decent grade. We looked at the levels of nurses at the nursing home, in addition to the number of hours those nurses were with residents, in computing our score in this category. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a lower figure than we were hoping for. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this facility actually excelled in some of the quality measures we assessed. In fact, it scored well in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these areas to be measures of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is every bit as important as the quantity of hours of care offered.

The final category we rated is long-term care, which is this nursing home's weakest area. We gave it an abysmal F for this category, which is obviously a major disappointment. Nursing homes that receive this kind of grade in this category likely don't provide the type of consistent around the clock care that some other nursing homes provide. Once we looked at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination records. We were disappointed to learn that this nursing home vaccinated only 74.33628 percent of its patients for pneumonia. To our surprise, this nursing home actually fared well at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. This was its best feature in this category.