Bethesda

On top of being a strong nursing home overall, it also received A+ inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually perfect. Our inspection scores are based on items found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that excel in this category tend to have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these places generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. While this nursing home had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were major deficiencies based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This exemplary nursing home also excelled in the area of short-term care, where we gave it a score of A+. Few facilities fared better in this category. In computing these short-term care ratings, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The goal is to formulate a measure for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various facilities. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last item we looked at in this area is the percentage of residents that were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that 6.7 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

Adding to its impressive resume, this nursing home also excelled in our nursing category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A for that category. The nursing score features several factors. The most important factor is the number of hours nurses spend with patients. This particular nursing home provided 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 nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

In our last category, we awarded this nursing home an A+ for our long-term care grade. This rounded out a first-rate profile. Facilities that excel in this category tend to be well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to residents. After considering the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia. Vaccines are critical to keeping patients out of the hospital. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.