Bethesda Home

One of the reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. Perhaps the most important factor we look at in computing our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Places with better scores in this area most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also want to note the fact that this facility was given a first-rate grade of A- in our short-term care area. In the area of short-term care, we endeavor to evaluate measures of a nursing home's rehabilitation. We analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and physical and occupational therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final datapoint we assessed in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

Turning to another strength for this nursing home, we gave them one of our stronger grades in our long-term care category as well, with a B. Long-term care scores in this range generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. After assessing the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 98.22485 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Vaccines are critical to keeping residents out of the hospital. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

The last category we scored is nursing, in which this facility received a B. This actually turned out to be this nursing home's weakest category. A nursing home is doing something right when their poorest grade still beats out most other nursing homes. When calculating a nursing home's nursing grade, we assess the number of hours nurses are caring for patients as well as the levels of training of those nurses. This nursing home averages 0.3 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 many times be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.