Shawnee Colonial Estates Nursing Home

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 account for several factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One key criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with better grades in this area generally have very few severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this nursing home had a few minor dings on its 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 deem 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.

Among the reasons we rated this facility so favorably is that it was given a favorable long-term care grade. In fact, long-term care is its second best category score. In that area, we gave this nursing home a score of A. When facilities receive this kind of score in long-term care it is typically a good sign for resident care and suggests that the place is well-staffed with nurses aids. On top of looking at the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 99.60159 percent of its residents. Vaccines are critical to keeping residents out of the hospital. This facility also keeps its residents out of the hospital. While it had 1.84 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, its risk adjusted score was better than most facilities since it had some more complex patients.

The third most favorable area we gave this facility in any category came in the area of short-term care, where we awarded it a grade of C. In the area of short-term care, we seek to qualify measures of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. We assess a nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and various therapists. We were pleased to find that this nursing home employs both registered nurses and physical therapists. The same can't be said for all nursing homes. The final datapoint we considered in this category is the percentage of residents that eventually returned home from the nursing home. This place fared much better in this area with 58.4 percent of its residents returning home. For most facilities, fewer than half of their short-stay residents are able to return home.

The final area we scored is nursing, which turned out to be this facility's weakest category. We gave this facility a grade of D in that category. Naturally, this category hurt the nursing home's overall grade to a certain degree. There are a host of factors within this area. Many of the subcategories reflect staffing levels. This particular nursing home provided 3.8 hours of nursing care per resident per day, which is below average. Unfortunately, this facility also didn't fare as well as we had hoped in some of the quality-based metrics we assessed in this category.