Courtland Terrace

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 take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these factors by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This nursing home was assessed 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered severe. This means that the inspectors did not consider any of these deficiencies an immediate risk to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Contributing to its superb profile, this facility also excelled in our long-term care area. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A for the category. Long-term care ratings of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. On top of considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 98.78049 percent of its patients, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia can be a life threatening illness for nursing home residents so we strongly prefer when a nursing home does not roll the dice on this issue. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The third category we analyzed is short-term care. Adding to its elite resume, this nursing home also performed well in this area. In fact, we gave it a of A for the category. Our short-term care ratings are considered to be most meaningful for residents needing rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation usually requires higher levels of highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes not merely nursing services, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Unfortunately, it does not look like this nursing home provided information about its staffing of registered nurses or physical therapists. The final metric we assessed in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We found that 6.6 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.

The next area we graded proved to be this nursing home's poorest category. However, even in its weakest link we still awarded it a respectable grade of B- for nursing. In determining a nursing home's nursing score, we look at the quantity of hours nurses are caring for residents and the level of licensure of those nurses. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Finally, nursing ratings also consider quality-based assessments, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours per resident, this facility performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is generally a good indicator that a place has quality controls in place. Some falls could be avoided if a nursing home provides enough nurses to assist its patients.