Deer's Head Center

We also found that this nursing home excelled in long-term care. We gave them an A+ in this category. Long-term care grades of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. After considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 99.31507 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is significantly higher than the majority of nursing homes. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This nursing home also earned an A+ inspection score, making it one of the few facilities to receive multiple A+'s in our category grades. Arguably the most important factor we look at in determining our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities with better scores in this category most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. Fortunately, although this place had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G through L. This means that CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

In addition, this facility received high marks in the area of nursing. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A+. We assessed the licensure of nurses at the facility, as well as the quantity of time the nurses worked with residents, in determining our grade in this area. This nursing home provides 0.9 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as having a protocol of moving a resident at least once a day.

In the final category we analyzed, this facility was given an impressive grade grade of A in our short-term care category. With this grade, the nursing home finished off a straight A report card. Short-term care ratings are based in part on the facility's quantity of skilled highly skilled professionals. This includes a vast scope of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, in addition to other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final item we considered in this area is the percentage of patients who ultimately were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.