Summit Hills Skilled Nursing Facility

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A for our inspections rating. Perhaps the most significant factor we look at in determining our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Facilities with higher scores in this area typically dodged the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. Unfortunately, it does not appear that we have deficiency data for this facility. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Contributing to its superb resume, this facility also excelled in our long-term care area. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A in that category. When nursing homes receive this kind of score in long-term care it is a good sign for patient care and indicates that the place is well-staffed with nurses aids. One of the datapoints we considered on top of nursing hours is vaccines. This facility provided the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its patients. This is a reliable method to avoid unnecessary hospitalizations for the elderly population. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received an impressive grade of A- in our nursing category. When calculating a nursing home's nursing grade, we assess the amount of time nurses are caring for residents as well as the level of licensure of the nurses. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can many times be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Switching gears to the last category, this nursing home received a high-end short-term care grade. We awarded it a B+ in that category, rounding out one of our more impressive profiles. Short-term care ratings are based on the nursing home's quantity of highly-skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This means a broad range of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, not to mention other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the number of residents that who were able to eventually return home from this facility. We found that 5 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.