Aberdeen Heights

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this facility also received an A+ long-term care grade. Nursing homes that receive this type of score in this category typically provide consistent around the clock care to ensure patients are well cared for. Once we looked at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is much higher than the average nursing home. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This nursing home also received an A+ inspection grade, making it one of the rare nursing homes to receive multiple A+'s in our category grades. This score is based on the nursing home's government inspections. Perhaps the most critical factor we consider in calculating our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Nursing homes with better scores in this category most likely dodged the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. While this facility had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also excelled in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of A. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. In computing our nursing ratings, we factor in both staffing levels and the training levels of those nurses. This particular nursing home provided 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well in terms of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

In our final category, we awarded this facility a grade of A+ for our short-term care rating. This rounded out a very favorable profile. Short-term care grades are commonly employed to assess a facility's performance with rehabilitation. In order to provide high-end rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally need to feature higher levels of skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other highly trained professionals. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last item we looked at in this area is the percentage of patients that returned home from the facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.