Delaware Veterans Home

In addition to a phenomenal overall grade, this facility also received A+ nursing grade. We looked at the levels of nurses at the nursing home, in addition to the quantity of time those nurses were with patients, in computing our score in this category. This nursing home averages 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed very well in the area of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

This facility received strong scores in the category of short-term care as well. As a result, it received one of our strongest scores in that category with a area of A-. Our short-term care ratings are considered to be more important for folks requiring rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation generally utilizes higher levels of highly-skilled nursing. This includes not merely nursing, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final statistic we looked at in this category is the number of residents that were able to return home from the facility. 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.

In addition, this nursing home received a very good inspection report this year as well. It earned one of our better grades in that area with a B. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining these inspection scores. One key factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is usually more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being relatively insignificant. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Remember that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in this industry.

The next area we assessed was long-term care, which turned out to be a weak link for this facility. We gave this nursing home a grade of D in long-term care, rendering this the facility's worst category grade. We would nevertheless recommend that you consider all of a nursing home's grades. If you are seeking services other than short-term rehabilitation, you should take a close look at each facility's long-term care grades. One of the statistics we considered after nurse's aid hours was vaccinations. Thankfully, this nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccination to 97.60766 percent of its residents. To our surprise, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this nursing home has less hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes. Unfortunately, a few of its other scores in this category were not as favorable as these.