Shipley Living

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for its nursing grade. Our nursing rating weighs many factors, most of which are tied to levels of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility Delaware in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by having a protocol of moving a resident at least once a day.

Adding to its impressive category scores, this nursing home excelled in the area of inspections, where it earned a grade of A. Few nursing homes performed as well in this area. Our inspection ratings weigh a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher scores in this area typically have few severe deficiencies. This nursing home was hit with 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This indicates that CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

The next area we assessed was long-term care. Adding to its top-shelf profile, this facility also excelled in that area. In fact, we awarded it a of A- for the area. Long-term care ratings of this caliber generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. After looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 91.08911 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is a few points lower than we anticipated but still a reasonably acceptable figure. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

In the final category we looked at, this facility was awarded an impressive grade grade of B+ in our short-term care category. With this grade, the facility completed a very strong report card. Short-term care grades are typically employed to assess a facility's rehabilitation services. To offer quality rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to have higher levels of highly skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other licensed professionals. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final statistic we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients that ultimately were able to return home from the facility. We found that 4.8 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.