Wisteria Place

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility has received near flawless health inspections in recent years. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing these inspection grades. One critical factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some are quite insignificant. This nursing home received 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered severe. This means that CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies an immediate risk to patient safety or health. A couple relatively minor deficiencies aren't necessarily something to panic about.

We also would like to emphasize the fact that this facility received a first-rate score of A in our short-term care category. Short-term care grades are commonly used to judge a facility's rehabilitation services. To offer highly scored rehabilitation services, facilities generally must feature higher levels of highly skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. This nursing home boosted its score in this category by offering more than 50% more physical therapy hours to its residents than the average facility. Finally, we looked at the percentage of patients that were able to return home from this nursing home. In addition to excelling in the area of physical therapy hours, we found that it performed as well as just about any facility in this area with 66 percent of its residents returning home.

Adding to its profile, this facility also earned a grade of B+ for its nursing rating. This is a well above average score in this category. Our nursing grade includes a variety of factors. The most important factor is the amount of time nurses spend with patients. This facility provided 3.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The next category we rated is long-term care. This nursing home received a very good nursing score this year, with a B. Although this is not nearly as elite as many of its other category grades, this is nevertheless one of our more favorable scores for this area. Facilities that receive this kind of grade in this category typically provide consistent around the clock care to ensure residents are kept in good health. Once we looked at the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is significantly higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. This nursing home also keeps its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had just 1.13 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a much lower hospitalization rate than the majority of nursing homes.