The Orchards of East Liverpool

In addition to earning a strong overall score, this facility also received an elite short-term care grade. We gave them one of our better grades in that area, with an impressive grade of A. In calculating our short-term care scores, we assess the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our objective is to create a tool for comparing the rehabilitation services of different facilities. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 5.9 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

This nursing home also excelled in the area of inspections. We awarded it an A- for that area. Inspection scores account for several factors included in a facility's inspection report. One key criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher grades in this category tend to have very few of these severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this nursing home had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. We should note that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in the industry.

Another strong feature for this facility is that it received an impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of B. Our nursing grade analyzes quite a few subcategories, however, the primary consideration is the number of nurse hours per patient per week. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can frequently be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The final category we assessed was long-term care, where we awarded it a strong grade of B. This nursing home really didn't have any weak spots. Long-term care scores in this range generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. One of the statistics we considered in addition to nursing hours was vaccinations. This nursing home provided the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its patients. This is a proven method to avoid unnecessary deaths and hospitalizations for the senior population. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.