Summit Hills Skilled Nursing Facility

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this facility also received an A+ long-term care grade. Long-term care scores in this range generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. After we finished looking at the volume of care provided by nurses, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is very impressive. Pneumonia is often a deadly condition for nursing home patients so we like it when a facility does not take any chances. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Adding to its impressive category grades, this facility also excelled in the category of inspections, where it received an A. Not many nursing homes performed as well in this area. Inspection scores weigh several factors found on a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better scores in this area generally have very few severe deficiencies. Unfortunately, we weren't able to locate deficiency counts for this nursing home. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Among its many impressive grades, this facility received an excellent nursing grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of A in that category. There are a host of criteria included in this area. Many of the subcategories relate to staffing levels. This particular nursing home provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at 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 place the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as employing a protocol of turning a patient more often.

In our final area, this nursing home also received an impressive short-term care grade, with a B+. This finished off a very strong profile. With our short-term care rating, we seek to create a meaningful gauge for rehabilitation services. In this process, we assess a nursing home's scope of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of residents that were able to return home from this facility. We found that 5 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.