Spring Meadows Care Center

The main reason this ended up being a decent nursing home is that it received an excellent inspection score. Its inspection grade was far superior to its overall grade. In our inspections category, we gave it a grade of A+. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in calculating our inspection scores. One key factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some can be quite minor. While this facility had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G through L. This means that the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Remember that deficiency-free inspections are uncommon in the industry.

We also awarded this facility a respectable grade in the area of long-term care, where we gave it a B-. Our long-term care grade is typically used to grade a facility's performance as a traditional nursing home, as opposed to focusing more on the skilled nursing services offered by a skilled nursing facility. On top of considering the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is higher than the majority of nursing homes. Lastly, this facility was also able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This facility's next best category grade came in the area of nursing. In that category, we gave this nursing home a grade of C. The nursing score analyzes several datapoints, many of which are tied to levels of nurse staffing. This place provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient daily. This is a much lower figure than we were hoping for. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality measures. While this place got docked a bit for nursing hours, it excelled in a few of these quality-based measures. With fewer than five percent of its residents experiencing pressure ulcers, it did very well in this subcategory. This is often an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as employing a protocol of turning a resident even once per day.

Moving on to the fourth category, this nursing home was given a C for short-term care, which is a decent score. Our short-term care grades are probably most critical for those needing rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation typically mandates higher levels of highly-skilled nursing services. This includes not merely nursing, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Unfortunately, we weren't able to locate information on registered nurse or physical therapy staffing for this nursing home. Lastly, we considered the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most nursing homes, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.