Caring House

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it received an A+ long-term care grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. Long-term care ratings in this range generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. On top of looking at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is very impressive. Pneumonia can be a life threatening illness for nursing home residents so we prefer when a facility doesn't leave its residents vulnerable. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

In addition, this facility received high marks in the area of nursing. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A+. Our nursing score is primarily based on a facility's level of nurse staffing. This facility provided 0.7 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed very well when it comes to avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Another quality feature of this nursing home is its inspection score. In that category, we gave this nursing home an impressive grade of A. Our inspection scores are tied to items located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that receive favorable grades in this category have very 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 facility had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were severe based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

The final category we graded was short-term care, where this facility received a grade of A-. This topped off a very strong report card. Only a select few nursing homes earned an A- or better in every category. Short-term care grades are commonly used to grade a nursing home's performance with rehabilitation. In order to provide highly graded rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must have better levels of highly skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other highly skilled individuals. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last measure we considered in this category is the number of patients who ultimately returned home from the nursing home. We found that 3.5 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.