Shady Lawn Health and Rehabilitation

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility earned near flawless inspections in recent years. We awarded them an A+ in this area. Our inspection grades are tied to many items located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that receive favorable grades in this area tend to have few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. While this place had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

In addition, this facility also was given favorable long-term care grades in our assessment. Indeed, we awarded them one of our stronger grades in that category, with a grade of B+. When nursing homes receive this type of grade in this category it is typically a good sign for resident care and suggests that the place is well-staffed with nurses aids. Once we assessed the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 99.5935 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is much higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This nursing home also received a strong nursing score. In fact, we awarded it an above average grade of B in this area. When calculating a nursing home's nursing score, we assess the amount of time nurses are caring for residents as well as the level of licensure of the nurses. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well in the area of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The next category we rated is short-term care. In this area, we awarded this facility a solid grade of B-. This actually turned out to be this facility's worst category. Short-term care grades are generally used to grade a facility's rehabilitation services. To have highly scored rehabilitation services, facilities generally must have better levels of highly skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other licensed professionals. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last statistic we considered in this area is the number of residents who were able to return home from the facility. We found that just 4.7 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home. This figure was below the national average.