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.

Contributing to this nursing home's list of achievements, it also was awarded a superb long-term care score. We gave them a dominant strong of A- in this category. Nursing homes that excel in long-term care tend to provide residents with more supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. In addition to assessing the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. Vaccines are critical to keeping patients out of the hospital. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This facility was given its next best category grade in the category of short-term care. We awarded this facility a B- in this area, which is a reasonably acceptable grade. In determining these short-term care ratings, we quantify the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The objective is to devise a barometer for comparing the rehabilitation services of various facilities. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last measure we looked at in this category is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that just 5.3 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is below average.

The final area we rated was nursing. This facility received a C in the category. Our nursing rating focuses on the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We look at both the levels of licensure of those nurses as well as the quantity of hours spent with patients. This nursing home averages just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this facility actually fared better in some of the quality measures we assessed. It scored well in terms of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be measures of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is just as important as the number of hours of care offered.