Dry Harbor Nursing Home

One of the reasons this ended up being a quality facility is that it earned a very impressive inspection rating. In fact, inspections is its best category. In this category, we awarded it an A. Inspection ratings are tied to several items located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that receive favorable grades in this area have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

In addition, this nursing home also was awarded favorable long-term care scores in our assessment. Indeed, we gave it one of our more favorable grades in that category, with a score of B+. Facilities that do well in this category tend to provide patients with better supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. On top of looking at the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 98.312614 percent of its residents. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents out of the hospital. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

The next category we looked at was short-term care. This nursing home was awarded an impressive short-term care score, with a grade of B in the category. In calculating these short-term care ratings, we assess the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our purpose is to formulate a tool for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various facilities. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final metric we assessed in this category is the percentage of patients who eventually returned home from the facility. We found that 5 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

The last area we rated was nursing. For this category, we gave this nursing home a grade of C. Our nursing grade is largely associated with the facility's level of nurse staffing. This place provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This is a low total compared to most nursing homes. Finally, nursing ratings also factor in quality-based metrics, such as avoiding major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours per resident, this place performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is generally a reliable indicator that a place has quality controls in place. Some falls can be avoided if a nursing home provides enough nurses aids to assist its residents.