Dugan Memorial Home

In addition to being a great overall grade, this facility also received A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. Perhaps the most critical factor we look at in computing our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a facility's inspection reports. Places with higher grades in this category most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. 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.

An additional reason we graded this nursing home so highly is that it was awarded an A+ long-term care score. This is just about as good as it gets in this category. When facilities receive a score in this range in long-term care it generally means it's well-staffed and is a quality place to live on a permanent basis. On top of looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is far higher than most nursing homes. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

To complement its strong performance in other areas, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. The nursing rating weighs several datapoints. The most important factor is the amount of time nurses spend with residents. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics 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 place the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of moving a patient even once per day.

In our final area, we gave this nursing home an A+ for its short-term care rating. This finished off a very strong report card. Short-term care grades are often used to judge a facility's performance with rehabilitation. In order to have quality rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must offer better levels of highly skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other licensed professionals. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final measure we looked at in this area is the number of patients that were able to return home from the facility. We found that 5.5 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.