Bell Trace Health and Living Center

To pair with a strong overall grade, we gave this facility a grade of A+ for our inspection category. Perhaps the most important factor we consider in calculating our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Facilities with higher scores in this area typically avoided the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Contributing to its top-shelf assessment, this facility also was awarded an excellent short-term care grade, with a grade of A. With our short-term care score, we attempt to craft a sound barometer for rehabilitation services. In doing so, we assess a nursing home's level of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last datapoint we looked at in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We found that 6.6 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

This nursing home also was awarded a favorable long-term care grade. In fact, we awarded it an above average score of B+ in this area. Facilities that receive this type of score in this category tend to provide consistent around the clock care to make sure residents are kept in good health. On top of considering the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is significantly higher than most nursing homes. Clearly, this nursing home 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 one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The last area we analyzed was nursing. We awarded this facility a solid grade in this category, with a grade of B-. Even though this wasn't as favorable as many of its other scores, it is still not a bad grade. In calculating a facility's nursing score, we consider the amount of time nurses are seeing residents and the levels of training of those nurses. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this nursing home surprisingly fared better in some of the quality measures we assessed. It scored well in the area of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is every bit as important as the quantity of hours of care provided.