Sanford Hillsboro Care Center

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is it earned a very impressive inspection grade. In fact, inspections ended up being its best category. In this area, we awarded this nursing home an A. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating our inspection scores. One key factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some end up being relatively insignificant. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that we were able to find deficiency data for this nursing home. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Among its many impressive grades, this facility received an excellent nursing grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of A- in that category. Nursing grades are mostly associated with the facility's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

We also want to alert you to the fact that this facility was awarded a top-shelf score of A- in our long-term care category. When facilities receive a score in this range in long-term care it generally means it's well-staffed and is a quality place to reside on a permanent basis. Once we looked at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is far higher than most nursing homes. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

In our last category, we gave this nursing home an A for its short-term care rating. This wrapped up a very impressive profile. With our short-term care score, we seek to forge a valuable measure for rehabilitation services. In this process, we look at a facility's level of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of residents who who were able to eventually return home from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.