Springfield Masonic Community

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. Our inspection scores are based on pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that excel in this area have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. Sadly, this facility was hit with a category L deficiency, which is not what we expected based on its inspection rating. This is the worst possible category of deficiencies. This category means the government inspectors found a widespread deficiency putting resident safety or health in immediate danger. Even a single deficiency in this category is concerning. In spite of this major red flag, other aspects of this facility's inspection report gave us some hope.

This nursing home also received a very impressive nursing grade. In fact, this turned out to be its second best category grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A. Our nursing rating weighs quite a few subcategories, most of which are based on quantities of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as employing a protocol of moving patients at least once a day.

Turning our next category, this nursing home was given first-rate short-term care score. In fact, we gave it a score of A in this category. In determining these short-term care grades, we quantify the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our goal is to devise a tool for comparing the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last metric we considered in this area is the percentage of residents that who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. We found that 6.1 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

In the last category, this facility also received an impressive long-term care grade, with a grade of A-. This completed an elite report card. Long-term care scores in this range 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 and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is significantly higher than the majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.