Sardis Oaks

On top of being a strong nursing home overall, this nursing home really excelled in the area of inspections, where it earned an A. Few facilities performed better in this category. Perhaps the most significant factor we look at in determining our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a facility's inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher scores in this area typically avoided the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. While this facility 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 means that the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. We should note that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in this industry.

One of the other reasons we rated this facility so favorably is that it was awarded a dominant short-term care score. In fact, short-term care is its second most favorable category grade. In that category, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A-. Our short-term care scores are likely most critical for people needing a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually utilizes higher levels of skilled nursing services. This means not only nursing services, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last item we considered in this area is the number of residents that eventually returned home from the nursing home. We found that 5.4 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

Another one of this facility's impressive category grades came in the area of nursing care. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B+. There are a variety of subcategories included in this area. Most of the subcategories are tied to staffing levels. This particular nursing home provided 0.3 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 frequently be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The last category we assessed is nursing, turned out to be this nursing home's least impressive area. We awarded this nursing home a grade of D in this area. This is one of the few dings on an otherwise impressive report card. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in long-term care it generally means the facility did not perform well in our measures relating to patient care. After considering the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 92.881355 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which happens to be somewhat below what we expected but still a reasonably acceptable percentage. Surprisingly, this place actually fared well at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. This is its best feature in this category.