Sparta Health and Rehabilitation

This facility received a solid overall grade as described above, but we really wanted to point out its excellent health inspection reports in recent years. We gave them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. These inspection scores weigh several factors, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these issues by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G through L. This tells you that CMS 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.

This nursing home also was awarded a positive long-term care score. In fact, we awarded them a grade of B+ in this area, which is one of our better. Long-term care scores in this range generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. Once we concluded our assessment of the amount of care provided by nurses, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 98.21429 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia sadly is often a life threatening ailment for nursing home residents so we like it when a facility doesn't leave its residents vulnerable. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Another strength of this nursing home is its favorable grade in nursing. We gave them one of our better scores in that area, with an impressive grade of D. Nursing ratings are tied to nurse staffing levels. With only 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day, this facility's nurse staffing levels were well below the national average. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing scores. This facility fared well in terms of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these areas to be good measures of the quality of nursing care.

The next area we graded is short-term care. We awarded this nursing home a grade of D in the area of short-term care, rendering this the nursing home's least impressive area. Short-term care grades are critical for people seeking rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually utilizes more skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means a wide scope of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Unfortunately, we found that this nursing home provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. The last metric we considered in this area is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that just 0 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these subpar metrics was damning for this nursing home's short-term care score.