Congregational Home

In addition to being a strong nursing home overall, it also received A+ government inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually perfect. Arguably the most significant factor we consider in calculating our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Nursing homes with better scores in this category most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. We weren't able to find information about this nursing home's deficiencies. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This top notch nursing home also fared very well in the category of long-term care, where we gave it a score of A+. Few facilities performed better in this area. When facilities receive this type of grade in this category it is a good sign for resident care and indicates that the nursing home is well-staffed with nurses and aids. On top of patient-friendly nursing hour statistics, this facility's vaccination statistics was as good as it gets also. In fact, it vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Lastly, we looked at its number of hospitalizations. Although it had 2.13 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, its risk adjusted score was middle of the road due to it having some more complicated patients.

Adding to its impressive resume, this nursing home also excelled in our nursing category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A- for that category. We looked at the licensure of nurses working for the nursing home, as well as the quantity of hours the nurses worked with patients, in determining our score in this category. This place provided 5.8 hours of nursing care per patient per day, which is among the highest totals in the country. A significant percentage of those hours were provided by registered nurses, which are one of the more skilled levels of nurses. We were very impressed by both of these statistics. On top of providing high levels of nursing care, this facility also fared well in several of the quality measures we assessed. By way of illustration, in terms of the percentage of its residents suffering from pressure ulcers, this facility performed better than the national average. This is usually a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided with better nursing care and having a policy of regularly turning residents to prevent bed sores.

The final area we rated is short-term care, where this facility was awarded an A-. This completed a very impressive report card. Very few facilities earned an A- or higher in all four categories. In computing our short-term care scores, we analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our purpose is to devise a scale for comparing the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. This place excelled in two key staffing areas we looked at. It provided about 50% more care from registered nurses and physical therapists than the average nursing home. The final datapoint we looked at in this category is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We found that it was respectable in this area with 46.2 percent of its residents able to return home.