The Reserve at Spring Hill

One of the reasons this ended up being a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is as good as it gets in this very important area. Perhaps the most critical factor we consider in calculating our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Facilities with higher scores in this category typically avoided the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also was strong in the area of short-term care, where it received a score of A. Only a select group of facilities received a better grade in this category. Short-term care ratings are important for prospective residents seeking rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually utilizes additional highly-skilled nursing. This means a wide range of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last measure we considered in this area is the number of residents that who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. We found that 6.5 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

Contributing to its high-end resume, this nursing home also was awarded a strong long-term care grade, with a grade of A. When nursing homes receive this type of score in long-term care it is typically a good sign for resident care and suggests that the nursing home is well-staffed with nurses aids. In addition to assessing the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 98.38709 percent of its patients, which is far higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

In the last category, this nursing home also was awarded an impressive nursing grade, with a grade of A. This completed an elusive straight A report card. The nursing rating assesses a handful of factors, however, the primary one is the quantity of nurse hours spent with patients. This nursing home averages 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at 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 place the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as having a policy of moving residents even once per day.