Zionsville Meadows

This facility's overall grade was bolstered by the fact that it has earned favorable inspections in recent years. We gave them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B+. This is a much better grade than the nursing home's overall score. Inspection scores are tied to datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that score well in this category have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. While this facility had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. A couple of minor deficiencies should not lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

Another one of this facility's higher category grades came in the area of short-term care. In that area, we gave this nursing home a grade of B. It actually fared better than most nursing homes in this category. Short-term care grades are based in part on the facility's quantity of skilled highly skilled professionals. This means a vast spectrum of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last statistic we looked at in this area is the number of patients that eventually returned home from the facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

The next category we graded was long-term care, where this facility was awarded a grade of B- in this category. For residents looking for a permanent residence rather than skilled nursing, long-term care grades are an important measure. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 98.611115 percent of its residents, which is higher than the average nursing home. Finally, this place was also able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

The next category we assessed was nursing. This nursing home received a grade of C for this category. In calculating our nursing ratings, we weigh both nursing hours and the training levels of the nurses. This facility provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This is a much lower figure than we were hoping for. Finally, our nursing scores also factor in some quality-focused measures. We like to look at the percentage of residents who sustained pressure ulcers and major falls. Sometimes these data points are measures of the quality of nursing care, since superior care tends to reduce these problems.