Sunplex Sub-Acute Center

The main reason this ended up being a decent nursing home is that it received an excellent inspection grade. In fact, its inspection score was far superior to its overall grade. In the inspections category, we gave this facility an A+. Inspection scores weigh several factors, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can find more information about each of these factors by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. While this nursing home had some deficiencies on its inspection report, none of them were major deficiencies based on CMS' scale. A couple of minor deficiencies should not lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

The second highest area we gave this nursing home in any area came in the area of long-term care, where we awarded it a C. With our long-term care grade, we focus on the volume of care offered by a facility, as well as a few qualitative datapoints. In addition to looking at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. This facility was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Moving on to another strength for this facility, it also earned an elite nursing rating. In fact, we gave this nursing home an D. Our nursing score assesses many subcategories, most of which are tied to levels of nurse staffing. This particular facility provided a meager 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This figure is far below the national average. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing ratings. This facility performed well when it comes to avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls.

The next category we graded was short-term care, which turned out to be this facility's least impressive category. We gave this nursing home a grade of D in that area. Our short-term care scores are considered to be most important for residents requiring rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation generally mandates higher levels of highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means not just nursing, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Not surprisingly, we found that this nursing home provides far less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of patients that who were able to eventually return home from this nursing home. This nursing home didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 4.2 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was well off the national average.