Shearer-Richardson Memorial Nursing Home

While this nursing home's overall grade was not bad, it really fared well in the category of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A for that category, which is one of our best scores. Arguably the most critical factor we consider in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places with better scores in this category most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. While this place had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the inspectors 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 always a good sign.

Turning to an additional strength for this facility, it also received a first-rate long-term care score. In fact, we gave this facility a grade of A-. Nursing homes that receive this kind of score in this category typically provide consistent around the clock care to ensure patients are kept in good health. After we finished assessing the amount of care provided by nurses, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 99.2278 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia sadly can be a life threatening ailment for nursing home residents so we like it when a nursing home does not leave its residents vulnerable. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

As it turns out, this nursing home only received a grade of D for its short-term care rating, which is not a very good score. In our short-term care assessment, we endeavor to forge a valuable gauge for rehabilitation. In this process, we assess the facility's scope of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. Not surprisingly, we found that this nursing home provides far less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. Finally, we assessed the percentage of residents that returned home from this nursing home. This facility didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 0 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.

Moving on to our last area, this facility really didn't fare very well. With a bottom of the barrel grade of F in nursing, this was this facility's poorest category. When computing a facility's nursing grade, we weigh the quantity of hours nurses are caring for residents and the levels of training of the nurses. This nursing home offered only 0 hours of nursing care per resident per day. In addition to receiving below average marks for total nursing hours, this nursing home was less impressive in some of the quality-based metrics we looked at in calculating our nursing grades. We looked at the percent of residents suffering pressure ulcers and found this place was at roughly 150 percent of the national average in this statistic. This is likely a bad sign when you consider that many bed sores are preventable with better nursing care. Unfortunately, this statistic really pulled down this nursing home's nursing score substantially.