Summer Hill Nursing Home

To pair with a favorable overall grade, we gave this facility an A+ for inspections. Inspection ratings weigh several factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we consider is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better scores in this category generally have very few of these severe deficiencies. While this facility had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This tells you that CMS did not consider 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.

Contributing to its fine assessment, this nursing home also received a strong long-term care score, with a score of A. When facilities receive a score in this range in long-term care it typically means it's well-staffed and is an overall good place to live on a permanent basis. Once we finished looking at the volume of care provided by nurses, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is very impressive. Pneumonia can be a life threatening condition for nursing home residents so we strongly prefer when a facility doesn't leave this to chance. 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 only 0.03 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

In addition, this facility also received favorable nursing grades this year. In fact, we awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B+. Nursing grades are heavily correlated with levels of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed very well when it comes to avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The next area we scored was this nursing home's poorest area. However, even in its weakest link we still gave it an acceptable grade of B- for our short-term care category. In determining our short-term care ratings, we scrutinize a nursing home's levels of skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other highly skilled individuals. This grade is generally a fair assessment of the nursing home's ability to rehabilitate patients. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 5 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most facilities, closer to half of their patients are able to return home so this figure is below average.