Senior Care of Hewitt

In addition to being a respectable facility overall, this facility really excelled in the category of inspections, where it earned a grade of A+. Few facilities performed better in this category. Our inspection scores are tied to datapoints found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that receive favorable grades in this category tend to have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these places generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. This place received 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered to be severe. This indicates that the government inspectors didn't deem any of these deficiencies to create an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A few relatively minor dings are not something to panic about.

This facility also was given a strong score in our long-term care category. We awarded this nursing home an above average grade of B in that category. Facilities that do well in long-term care tend to be well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to residents. Once we assessed the volume of nursing care, we turned to the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia can be a deadly condition for nursing home residents so we strongly prefer when a nursing home does not take any chances. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This nursing home's next best category was nursing. We awarded it a grade of C in this category. This is basically a middle of the road grade in this category. When computing our nursing scores, we analyze both the number of hours nurses spend with residents and the levels of licensure of those nurses. This nursing home averages just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Finally, nursing scores also consider quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. Despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours per resident, this facility actually performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is typically a reliable indicator that a nursing home has quality controls in place. Many falls could be avoided if a nursing home provides enough nurses aids to assist its patients.

The final category we assessed was short-term care, ended up being this nursing home's least impressive area. We gave this nursing home a grade of D in this category. This really is one of just a few dings in an otherwise impressive profile. Our short-term care grade is generally employed to grade a facility's rehabilitation services. To have quality rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must provide higher levels of skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other highly skilled individuals. In this facility's case, we found that it provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the typical facility. The last statistic we looked at in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 4.9 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these poor statistics sunk this nursing home's short-term care grade.