Sweden Valley Manor

While this facility's overall grade was decent, it really excelled in the category of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A- for that category, which is one of our highest scores. Inspection grades are based on many pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that score well in this category typically have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. We should point out that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in the industry.

Another one of this facility's more impressive category grades came in the category of short-term care. In that area, we gave this nursing home a B+. It actually performed better than most nursing homes in this area. In our short-term care rating, we endeavor to create a fair measure for rehabilitation. In this process, we assess the nursing home's scope of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final item we assessed in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We found that 5 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.

This nursing home's next best category was nursing. We awarded it a grade of B- in this category. This is basically a middle of the road grade in this category. Our nursing grade is based on the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We factor in both the levels of training of those nurses and the quantity of hours spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Lastly, despite not having the highest total nursing hours, this nursing home actually performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is typically an indicator that a facility has quality controls in place.

Switching gears to our fourth area, we gave this facility a grade of D in our long-term care category. This was the nursing home's worst category score. Unfortunately, this category hurt the facility's overall grade a bit. For residents seeking a permanent residence as opposed to rehabilitation, long-term care grades are very important. On top of looking at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 99.29825 percent of its patients, which is higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Surprisingly, this place was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had just 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. Unfortunately, some of its other scores in this category weren't as favorable as these.