Carroll House

On top of being a strong facility overall, this nursing home really excelled in our inspections category, where it received a grade of A-. Few facilities performed better in that category. These inspection scores take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these items by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. While this facility had a few minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G through L. This means that the inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe made us feel better about this inspection report.

Adding to this nursing home's list of strengths, it also received an excellent nursing grade. We awarded them an impressive grade of A- in this category. In determining our nursing ratings, we weigh both nursing hours and the levels of licensure of the nurses. This particular nursing home provided 0.6 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 frequently be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Turning to an additional strength for this nursing home, we gave them one of our more favorable grades in our long-term care category as well, with a B+. Facilities that do well in long-term care tend to be well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to residents. After looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is significantly higher than the majority of nursing homes. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

The last area we analyzed is short-term care. We awarded this nursing home one of our more favorable grades in this category, with a grade of B. This nursing home ended up being very solid in each category we looked at. Our short-term care scores are presumably more critical for those requiring a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates more skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes not merely nursing services, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home.