Stonespring of Vandalia

The main reason this nursing home received a decent overall grade is its impeccable government inspections in recent years. We gave it one of our better grades in that area, with a grade of A+. This is a notably better score than the place's overall score, which was decent but not in the elite range. Inspection scores weigh several factors, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can find more information about each of these items by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

This nursing home also was given an impressive score in our short-term care category. We awarded this nursing home an above average grade of B in that category. Our short-term care scores are considered to be more critical for those requiring a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually mandates additional skilled nursing. This includes not just nursing, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last measure we considered in this category is the number of residents that ultimately returned home from the nursing home. We found that 5.3 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

This facility's next best category came in the area of long-term care. In that category, we gave this nursing home a grade of C. Long-term care grades are used to score a nursing home's performance as a traditional nursing home, as opposed to focusing on the skilled nursing services offered by a rehabilitation facility. On top of considering the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 99.346405 percent of its patients. Finally, this facility was also able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.03 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This nursing home's least impressive category is nursing, which is the final category we assessed. In this category, we awarded this facility a grade of D. In calculating a nursing home's nursing score, we weigh the number of hours nurses are caring for patients and the level of skill of the nurses. This nursing home offered a meager 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient daily. This is an alarmingly low total. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing scores. This facility fared well in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these metrics to be good measures of the quality of nursing care.