Bancroft Convalescent Hospital

In addition to receiving a strong overall grade, this facility fared well in our long-term care category. We awarded it an A+ for that category, which is one of our highest scores. When facilities receive this kind of score in long-term care it is usually a good sign for resident care and indicates that the place is well-staffed with nurses aids. One of the factors we considered after nursing hours was vaccinations. This facility provided the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccination is a reliable method to minimize unnecessary hospitalizations for the aged 65 and up population. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

In addition, this facility also earned top notch inspections in recent years. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with an A-. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating our inspection scores. One of those factors is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being relatively minor. Although this place had some deficiencies on its report, none of them were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

In addition, this facility also received favorable nursing grades this year. In fact, we awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B. There are many criteria included in this grade. Many of these criteria are tied to staffing levels. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can frequently be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The final area we assessed was short-term care, which turned out to be this facility's least impressive category. We gave this nursing home a D in this category. Of course, this category pulled down the nursing home's overall grade a bit. Short-term care ratings are important for people looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates additional highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means a broad spectrum of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Unfortunately, this nursing home was below average in terms of its quantity of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its residents based on the measures we assessed. The last metric we looked at in this area is the percentage of patients that returned home from the facility. This nursing home struggled quite a bit in this area as well, with just 0 percent of its residents returning home. This was well below the national average.