Autumn Leaves

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this facility also received an excellent long-term care score, with a grade of A. Nursing homes that receive this type of grade in long-term care tend to provide consistent around the clock care to ensure residents are well cared for. In addition to looking at 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 far higher than the average nursing home. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This facility has received near flawless health inspections in recent years. We awarded them an impressive grade of A- in this category. Inspection grades take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can find more information about each of these issues by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its impressive resume, this nursing home also excelled in our nursing category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A- for that category. The nursing grade weighs a variety of datapoints. The most heavily weighted one is the number of hours nurses spent with residents. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of turning a resident more often.

The last category we rated was short-term care, where this nursing home received a grade of B+. This wrapped up a very impressive profile. Only a select few nursing homes received a B+ or higher in in each area we assessed. Short-term care scores are meaningful for patients seeking rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually requires higher levels of highly-skilled nursing. This means a wide scope of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. It does not appear that this nursing home submitted information on registered nurse or physical therapist staffing. The last statistic we considered in this area is the percentage of residents that were able to return home from the facility. We found that 5 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.