Cheshire Home

To pair with a favorable overall score, we awarded this facility a grade of A+ for inspections. Arguably the most significant factor we look at in calculating our inspection grades is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a facility's inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher scores in this area most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. This facility was hit with 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered to be major deficiencies. This indicates that the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies to pose an immediate threat to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received an impressive grade of A in our nursing category. Our nursing grade is primarily associated with a nursing home's nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 0.7 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as having a policy of turning a patient more often.

This facility also fared very well in the category of long-term care, where it received a grade of A. Not many facilities received a better grade in this category. For long-term care residents, the primary objective is to maintain patients' quality of life and keep them safe. One of the factors we considered in addition to nurse's aid hours was vaccinations. This nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccine to 92.36642 percent of its residents. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The fourth area we looked at is short-term care, where this facility received an A-. This finished off an elite profile. Few nursing homes earned an A- or better in every category. In calculating our short-term care grades, we look at the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our objective is to formulate a barometer for sizing up the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last statistic we considered in this category is the number of residents that ultimately returned home from the nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.