The Meadows of Orange

While we were not high on this place overall, we awarded it a B+ for our inspections category. This score is far better than the nursing home's overall grade. Our inspection ratings account for several factors included in a facility's inspection report. One key criteria we weigh heavily is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. You generally want to avoid places with a bunch of deficiencies flagged. This nursing home was assessed 6 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This indicates that the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies to be an immediate threat to resident safety or health. A couple minor deficiencies aren't the end of the world.

Another one of this facility's more favorable category scores was in the category of long-term care. In that category, we gave this facility a B. Long-term care scores in this range generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. Once we looked at the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is better than the vast majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Another unfortunate development is the F this nursing home received in the category of short-term care. With our short-term care category, we attempt to forge a sound measure for rehabilitation services. In this process, we look at the nursing home's offerings of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. Based on its score in this area, we weren't stunned to learn that this facility was well below average in terms of the quantity of registered nurse and physical therapy hours provided to its patients based on the metrics we assessed. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of residents who were able to return home from this nursing home. This facility didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 4.6 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was quite a bit off the national average.

Moving on to our last category, this facility did not perform well here either. Due to a poor grade of F in nursing, this is really as terrible as it gets. Nursing grades are heavily correlated with levels of nurse staffing. This facility averaged just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient daily. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. In addition to receiving below average scores for total nursing hours, this place was a bit less impressive in some of the quality-based metrics we looked at in determining our nursing grades. We looked at the percent of patients suffering pressure ulcers and found this place was at approximately 150 percent of the national average in this metric. This is likely a bad sign when you consider that many pressure ulcers are believed to be preventable with better nursing care. Unfortunately, this statistic pulled down this facility's nursing rating significantly.