Bethany Nursing Home

On top of being a strong facility overall, it also received A+ government inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. Our inspection ratings are tied to items found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that excel in this category tend to have few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these places should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. While this facility had some deficiencies on its inspection report, none were major deficiencies based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

To add to its first-rate assessments in other areas, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A- for our long-term care rating. Long-term care grades of this caliber generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. In addition to considering the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is very impressive. Pneumonia tragically can be a life or death condition for nursing home patients so we like it when a facility doesn't roll the dice on this issue. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

To complement its strong performance in other areas, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. Our nursing rating assesses the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We look at both the levels of skill of the nurses as well as the amount of time spent with patients. This particular nursing home provided 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed very well in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

In the last category, this facility also was awarded a first-rate short-term care rating, with a grade of B+. This topped off a very strong profile. Our short-term care scores are presumably more meaningful for people requiring rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation typically mandates more highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes not merely nursing, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 5.4 percent of this facility's patients returned home.