Shannondale Health Care Center

We also would like to emphasize that this facility has received nearly flawless health inspections recently. We gave them an impressive grade of A in this area. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing these inspection scores. One key factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some are relatively minor. While 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 didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe made us feel better about this inspection report.

This facility also excelled in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of A. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. In computing our nursing ratings, we analyze both the number of hours nurses spend with residents and the training levels of the nurses. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

We also want to draw your attention to the fact that this nursing home received a high-end score of A in our long-term care category. Nursing homes that receive this type of grade in long-term care typically provide consistent 24/7 care to make sure residents are well cared for. After assessing the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is far higher than the average nursing home. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The final category we looked at was short-term care. In this category, we gave this nursing home an acceptable grade of B-. This proved to be this facility's worst area. Our short-term care grade is often used to assess a nursing home's rehabilitation services. To provide highly rated rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to have higher levels of highly skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other highly trained professionals. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final statistic we considered in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We discovered that just 4 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is actually below average.