Beacon Hill at Eastgate

To pair with a strong overall score, we gave this facility an A+ for our inspection category. Inspection ratings 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 grades in this category typically have very few of these severe deficiencies. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that the government inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A few relatively minor deficiencies are not necessarily something to panic about.

Contributing to its high-end profile, this nursing home also performed well in our short-term care category. In fact, we gave it a score of A for that area. Short-term care scores are based on a nursing home's quantity of highly-skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This includes a wide range of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, in addition to other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 6.4 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

This facility also excelled in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of A. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. We assessed the levels of nurses working for the facility, as well as the number of hours those nurses worked with residents, in calculating our grade in this area. This nursing home provides 0.5 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 facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can typically be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

In our final area, this facility also was awarded a very strong long-term care grade, with a grade of B+. This rounded out a very strong profile. When nursing homes receive a grade in this range in long-term care it generally means it's well-staffed and is an overall good place to reside on a permanent basis. One of the statistics we considered after nursing hours is vaccines. This nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccination to 97.59036 percent of its residents. Vaccination is a proven method to avoid unnecessary deaths and 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 patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.