The Tuckerman Terraces

In addition to being a first rate facility overall, it also performed well in the area of inspections, where it received a grade of A. Few nursing homes performed better in this category. These inspection ratings weigh several factors, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these factors by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G through L. This tells you that the government inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also would like to point out the fact that this facility was given an impressive grade of A- in our short-term care category. Short-term care grades are typically used to measure a nursing home's rehabilitation services. In order to have highly scored rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to have better levels of highly skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other licensed professionals. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last statistic we assessed in this category is the percentage of residents who were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that 6.1 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

We also would like to draw your attention to the fact that this nursing home was given a top-shelf grade of A- in our long-term care area. Nursing homes that receive this kind of grade in this category tend to provide consistent 24/7 care to make sure patients are kept in good health. On top of considering the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 95.833336 percent of its residents, which is better than the majority of nursing homes. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The last category we rated was nursing, in which this nursing home was given a B. Although this wound up being its lowest category score, this is nevertheless a favorable grade. The nursing rating includes many data points. The most heavily weighted variable is the quantity of hours nurses spent with residents. This nursing home provides 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 place 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.