Bethesda Health Care Facility

To pair with its decent overall score, we gave this facility an A+ for our inspections rating. This score is far more impressive than its overall score. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing our inspection grades. One of those factors is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies can be relatively minor. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you CMS did not 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.

An additional strength of this facility is its favorable grade in long-term care. We awarded it one of our most impressive scores in that area, with a grade of A-. When facilities receive this type of score in long-term care it is a good sign for resident care and suggests that the nursing home is well-staffed with nurses aids. On top of assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients healthy. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.04 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The third area we analyzed was short-term care. In this category, where we gave this nursing home an F, which was about as bad as it gets. Our short-term care ratings are likely more important for people requiring a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically requires more skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes not merely nursing, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Unfortunately, we found that this nursing home provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. The last item we considered in this category is the number of patients who ultimately were able to return home from the facility. This nursing home struggled quite a bit in this metric as well, with just 4.7 percent of its residents returning home. This was quite a bit below average.

The next area we analyzed was nursing, which ended up being this nursing home's worst category. It received an abysmal F for this area, which is certainly a major disappointment. The nursing rating includes many factors, many of which are based on levels of nurse staffing. With just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident each day, this place's nurse staffing levels were far below average. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in calculating our nursing scores. This facility fared well when it comes to avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good measures of the quality of nursing care.