Sentara Meadowview Terrace

In addition to performing well in its overall grade, this facility performed at an even higher level in the area of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A. Inspection ratings take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these issues by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. While this nursing home had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you 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. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

One of the other reasons we graded this nursing home so well is that it was awarded a strong long-term care score. Indeed, long-term care turned out to be its second best category grade. In that area, we gave this nursing home a grade of A. Long-term care ratings in this range generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. In addition to looking at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 98.290596 percent of its residents, which is far higher than the average nursing home. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This facility's next best category was its nursing grade, where it received a grade of B-. While this didn't quite match its scores in some of the categories discussed above, this is still a decent score. Nursing ratings are based largely on quality and quantity of nursing care. This nursing home averages just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Finally, although this place got docked a bit for its nursing hours, it excelled in some of our quality-based measures. With fewer than five percent of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, it did well in this area.

The next area we scored was short-term care, in which this facility received a B-. This actually ended up being this facility's least impressive area. This is still not the end of the world. In computing our short-term care ratings, we analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The goal is to devise a measure for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various facilities. We weren't able to find registered nurse or physical therapy staffing data for this nursing home. Finally, we considered the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 5.1 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most nursing homes, closer to half of their patients are able to return home so this figure is below average.