Sapphire Health and Rehab

While this nursing home's overall grade was decent, it really fared well in the area of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A- for that category, which is one of our highest scores. Our inspection grades are based on several pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that score well in this area tend to have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This tells you CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A few minor deficiencies should not stop you from considering a nursing home.

This facility was given its second highest category score in the area of long-term care. We awarded this facility a grade of B- in this category, which is an acceptable score. Our long-term care grades are more meaningful for individuals in need of more traditional services associated with personal care. On top of looking at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. Fortunately, this nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients, which is a very solid percentage. Finally, this facility was also able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

We also awarded this facility a solid grade in the category of short-term care, where we awarded it a C. Short-term care grades are commonly used to grade a facility's rehabilitation services In order to have high-end rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must feature better levels of highly skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other licensed professionals. Unfortunately, this place was below average in terms of its level of registered nurse and physical therapy hours provided to its patients based on the metrics we assessed. The question is whether this adversely impacted quality of care. The final metric we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients who who were able to eventually return home from the facility. We found that just 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

Moving on to our final category, this facility did not fare very well. With a bottom of the barrel grade of F in nursing, this was its poorest category grade. Nursing scores are largely associated with a facility's nurse staffing. With just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient per day, this facility's nurse staffing levels were quite a bit below the national average. On top of ranking below average in nursing hours per resident, this place also had poor scores in the quality-based metrics we looked at in determining our nursing ratings. We looked at the percent of patients experiencing pressure ulcers and major falls. This facility was at roughly 1.5 times the national average in both of these metrics. This is likely a bad sign when you consider that many bed sores and falls are believed to be preventable with better nursing care. These metrics helped pull down this nursing home's nursing rating significantly.