Walter B Crook Nursing Facility

In addition to performing well overall, this facility received a nearly flawless inspection report. Therefore, it earned one of our best grades in that area with an A+. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing our inspection scores. One critical factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is usually more important than the number of deficiencies, as some end up being relatively insignificant. Although this facility had some deficiencies on its report, none were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also was awarded a strong long-term care grade. In fact, this is this facility's second strongest category score. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A. When nursing homes receive this type of score in this category it is usually a good sign for patient care and indicates that the nursing home is well-staffed with nurses and aids. On top of considering the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia sadly can be a life threatening condition for nursing home residents so we prefer when a facility does not leave its residents vulnerable. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received an impressive grade of A- in our nursing category. In calculating our nursing grades, we factor in both nursing hours and the skill levels of the nurses. This particular nursing home provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed very well in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

In the last category we looked at, this nursing home was awarded an impressive grade grade of A- in our short-term care category. With this grade, the facility rounded out a straight A profile. Short-term care scores are crucial for people requiring rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually requires more highly-skilled nursing services. This means a vast range of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we considered the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home.