Schoenbrunn Healthcare

The primary reason this ended up being a decent nursing home is that it earned an excellent inspection score. Its inspection grade was far better than its overall score. In the inspections category, we gave it an A. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing these inspection scores. One key factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies are quite insignificant. Fortunately, although this nursing home had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means 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. A few minor deficiencies should not stop you from considering a nursing home.

This facility's second best category grade came in the area of nursing. In that category, we gave this nursing home a grade of B-. Our nursing rating is largely associated with the facility's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Lastly, although this place got dinged a bit for its nursing hours per resident, it excelled in a few of our quality-based metrics. With fewer than five percent of its patients experiencing pressure ulcers, it performed very well in this statistic.

The third most favorable area we awarded this facility in any category came in the category of short-term care, where we awarded it a C. In determining these short-term care ratings, we quantify the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our goal is to devise a scale for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. We found that this place was below average in the two key staffing areas we assessed. The facility provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. The last statistic we assessed in this category is the percentage of patients that ultimately were able to return home from the facility. We found that just 5.4 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

Moving on to our last category, we gave this nursing home a grade of D in the area of long-term care. This is the nursing home's least impressive category score. For patients seeking a permanent place to live rather than rehabilitation, long-term care grades are very important. In addition to considering the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents, which is higher than the majority of nursing homes. To our surprise, this place was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had just 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. Unfortunately, some of its other scores in the category were not as favorable as these.