Colonial Health Care

In addition to being a great overall grade, this facility also received A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. Inspection grades weigh a host of factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher grades in this category typically have few severe deficiencies. This nursing home was assessed 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered to be major deficiencies. This indicates that CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies an imminent threat to resident safety or health. Remember that deficiency-free inspections are rare in the industry.

This nursing home also received a very impressive nursing grade. In fact, this turned out to be its second best category grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A-. Our nursing rating is largely tied to a facility's nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0 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 typically be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Turning to our next category, this nursing home also received a grade of B+ for its long-term care rating. This is a well above average grade in this category. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in long-term care it generally means it's well-staffed and is a quality place to live on a permanent basis. Once we assessed the amount of care provided by nurses, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is very impressive. Pneumonia is too frequently a life or death health condition for nursing home patients so we prefer when a facility doesn't take any chances. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

In the last category we graded, this facility was given a very strong grade of B+ in our short-term care category. With this grade, the facility wrapped up a first-rate report card. Our short-term care grade is typically used to gauge a nursing home's performance with rehabilitation. In order to provide high-end rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally need to offer better levels of highly skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other types of therapists. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that this nursing home provided information about its staffing of registered nurses or physical therapists. The last metric we considered in this category is the number of patients who ultimately were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.