Belknap County Nursing Home

On top of receiving an elite overall score, this nursing home also received an A+ inspection score. This grade is based on its recent government inspections. An A+ in this area is one of the best complements we can pay to a facility. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining our inspection grades. One key factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some end up being quite minor. Fortunately, although this nursing home had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G through L. This tells you that the inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Another reason we rated this facility so favorably is that it was awarded an A+ long-term care score. This is just about as dominant as it gets in this category. Nursing homes that excel in this category typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to residents. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents, which is much higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Adding to its profile, this facility also earned a grade of B+ for its nursing rating. This is a well above average score in this category. We weighed the skill-level of nurses at the facility, in addition to the number of hours the nurses worked with residents, in computing 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 nursing home 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 often be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Turning to the final area, this facility received a respectable short-term care rating. Even though this is not nearly as elite as many of its other scores, this is really not a major area of concern. In the category of short-term care, we try to evaluate indicators of a nursing home's rehabilitation. We assess the facility's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and various therapists. We were not able to locate information on registered nurse or physical therapy staffing for this nursing home. The last measure we assessed in this area is the percentage of residents who returned home from the facility. We found that just 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home.