Swope Ridge Geriatric Center

Even though we were not high on this facility overall, we gave it a B- for our long-term care rating. This is better than the nursing home's overall score. Our long-term care grade assesses a facility's personal care instead of the highly skilled nursing or healthcare services that are critical to a rehabilitation facility. In addition to assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. As it turns out, this nursing home gave the vaccine to just 85.98726 percent of its patients, which is well below average. Nevertheless, this nursing home keeps its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

We awarded this facility a C for our inspections rating. This grade is better than the nursing home's overall score. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining these inspection ratings. One of those factors is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies are quite insignificant. This facility had 4 deficiencies on its government inspection report, but none were in any of the categories labeled G through L. This tells you that this facility avoided the more significant categories of deficiencies. Unfortunately, we also need to draw your attention to the fact that this facility received significant government fines in recent years.

We awarded this facility a respectable grade in the area of nursing as well, with a grade of C. Our nursing score assesses the facility's nurse staffing levels. We factor in both the levels of training of those nurses as well as the amount of time spent with patients. This facility provides only 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a somewhat concerning figure which is well below the national average. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this facility fared better in some of the quality measures we looked at. It scored well in the area of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls.

Switching gears to the final area, we awarded this facility a D in short-term care. This was the nursing home's least impressive category rating. In computing our short-term care scores, we assess a nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. This score is often a useful measure of a nursing home's ability to rehabilitate patients. With a score this poor in this category, we were not shocked to learn that this nursing home was below average in two of the key staffing figures we assess. The facility supplied significantly fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most facilities. Finally, we assessed the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. This was not a strength for this facility. We found that just 4.6 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home. At most facilities, around half of their patients are able to return home so this is well below average.