Shem Creek Health Center

One of the many reasons this ended up being a quality nursing home is that it earned an impressive grade in inspections. Inspections ended up being its best category. In that area, we awarded this facility an A. Our inspection ratings are tied to several datapoints found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that receive favorable grades in this area tend to have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. We were not able to track down deficiency data for this nursing home. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its dominant profile, this nursing home also performed well in our long-term care category. In fact, it received a score of A for that area. Facilities that do well in this category tend to provide patients with closer supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. On top of looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccines are critical to keeping residents healthy. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Turning our next category, this facility received a top-shelf short-term care grade. In fact, we awarded it a score of A- in that area. Our short-term care grades are likely most critical for those needing rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation typically requires higher levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means not merely nursing, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final statistic we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients who who were able to eventually return home from the facility. We found that 5.7 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

The last area we rated is nursing. We gave this facility an acceptable score in that category, with a grade of B-. While this isn't as high as some of its other grades, it is still not a bad grade. Our nursing score considers a variety of factors. The most important factor is the number of hours nurses spend with patients. This particular nursing home provided just 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident daily. This figure is far below average. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in some quality-focused measures. We especially look at the percent of patients who sustained pressure ulcers and major falls. These metrics are decent measures of the quality of nursing care, since superior care can reduce these problems.