The Courtyard Rehabilitation and Healthcare Center

On top of performing well in its overall grade, this facility performed at an even higher level in the area of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A. Our inspection scores are tied to many pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that excel in this area have few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. Although this place had a few deficiencies on its report, none of them were major deficiencies based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Contributing to this nursing home's list of achievements, it also was awarded a fine long-term care grade. We gave them an elite strong of A- in this area. Long-term care scores in this range generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. In addition to assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 95.652176 percent of its patients, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia is too frequently a life or death illness for nursing home residents so we strongly prefer when a facility does not leave its residents vulnerable. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. With just 1.25 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility had less hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes.

This facility's next best category was its nursing grade, where it received a grade of B-. While this didn't quite match its scores in some of the categories discussed above, this is still a decent score. There are a host of datapoints included in this category. Most of the criteria are tied to the quantity of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages just 2.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Although this nursing home ranked poorly in terms of the quantity of nursing care offered, it surprisingly performed admirably in some of our quality measures. In fact, it was above average in two of the major subcategories we assess, with good scores for minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. These statistics are good measures of the quality of nursing care offered since many bed sores and falls can be avoided.

The next category we analyzed was short-term care. We awarded this nursing home a D in short-term care, making this the nursing home's weakest category grade. In calculating these short-term care ratings, we analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The purpose is to create a barometer for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various facilities. We found that this facility was below average in one of the two key staffing areas we looked at. It offered fewer registered nurse hours per resident than most other nursing homes. The last datapoint we considered in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that just 40.8 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is well below average. This statistic was damning for this facility's short-term care grade.