The Gardens

In addition to being a respectable nursing home overall, this facility also excelled in the category of inspections, where it earned an A-. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining our inspection scores. One key factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some of these are quite insignificant. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G through L. This tells you CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. We should note that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in the industry.

Another one of this nursing home's more impressive category scores was in the category of long-term care. In that category, we awarded this facility a grade of B+. It actually outpaced most facilities in this category. Nursing homes that do well in long-term care typically provide patients with closer supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. One of the factors we considered on top of nurse's aid hours was vaccinations. This nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccine to 94.35028 percent of its patients. Vaccination is a reliable method to minimize unnecessary deaths and hospitalizations for the aged 65 and up population. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

In addition, we awarded this nursing home a grade of B in our nursing category. This is one of our better grades. Nursing grades are mostly based on a facility's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as employing a protocol of turning residents at least once a day.

Turning to the final category, we gave this nursing home a grade of D in short-term care. This was the facility's worst category score. Unfortunately, this grade pulled down the nursing home's overall profile to a certain degree. In determining our short-term care ratings, we scrutinize the nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other licensed professionals. This grade is frequently a reliable measure of the nursing home's ability to rehabilitate patients. In this nursing home's case, we found that it provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. The last item we considered in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that just 4.4 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these poor statistics was damning for this nursing home's short-term care score.