Preferred Care at Hamilton Nursing & Rehabilitation Center

The primary reason this ended up being a decent nursing home is that it received an elite inspection score. In fact, its inspection score was far better than its overall score. In the inspections category, we gave this facility a grade of A+. Our inspection grades weigh several factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One key criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better scores in this area usually have few of these severe deficiencies. While this nursing home had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This tells you that the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor made us feel better about this inspection report.

This facility also was given an impressive grade in our short-term care category. We gave this facility a better than average grade of B+ in that area. With our short-term care grade, we try to forge a valuable barometer for rehabilitation services. In this process, we assess the facility's level of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of patients that who were able to eventually return home from this nursing home. We found that 6 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

This nursing home's next best category was nursing. We awarded it a grade of B- in this category. This is basically a middle of the road grade in this category. In determining our nursing scores, we factor in both staffing levels and the training levels of those nurses. This nursing home averages just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Finally, our nursing grades also consider quality-based measures, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours per resident, this facility performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is often an indicator that a facility has sufficient quality controls in place. Some falls can be avoided if a nursing home provides enough nurses to assist its residents.

The next category we rated is long-term care. Sadly, it received an abysmal F for this category, which is a bottom of the barrel grade. This is clearly a significant concern. For prospective residents seeking a permanent place to live as opposed to rehabilitation, long-term care is an important category. In addition to assessing the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. Thankfully, this nursing home administered the vaccine to 99.267395 percent of its patients, which is a very respectable statistic. Surprisingly, this nursing home was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. Unfortunately, a few of its other scores in this category weren't as favorable as these.