Embassy of Swanton

The main reason this turned out to be a decent nursing home is that it received an elite inspection score. Its inspection grade was far better than its overall grade. In the inspections category, we gave this facility an A-. Our inspection grades are tied to items found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that score well in this area tend to have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. While this place had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This tells you that the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A couple of minor deficiencies should not lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

This nursing home's nursing grade appears to be one of its better features. The facility received a grade of B- in this category. Our nursing score analyzes quite a few factors, however, the main consideration is the level of nurse hours spent with patients. This nursing home averages just 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this nursing home excelled in some of the quality measures we looked at. In fact, it performed well when it comes to avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers.

We also awarded this facility a respectable score in the area of long-term care, where we gave it a grade of C. In a long-term care environment, the primary objective is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. Once we assessed the volume of care provided by nurses, we turned to the facility's vaccination record. Candidly, we were a bit concerned this nursing home vaccinated just 90.497734 percent of its patients for pneumonia. Fortunately, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The next area we rated is short-term care, which is a weak link for this facility. We awarded this facility a grade of just D for our short-term care category. In determining our short-term care ratings, we size up the facility's levels of skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other highly trained professionals. This rating is more often than not a fair assessment of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. Given its grade in this category, we weren't surprised to learn that this nursing home was well below average in terms of its quantity of physical therapy and registered nurse hours offered to its patients based on the measures we assessed. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. This definitely wasn't a strength for this facility. We found that just 4.5 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home. At most facilities, around half of their residents are able to return home so this is well below average.