Dugan Memorial Home

On top of receiving a strong overall score, this facility earned an A+ inspection score. This grade is based on the facility's recent government inspections. An A+ in this area is one of the highest complements we can pay to a nursing home. Perhaps the most important factor we consider in calculating our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Places with higher grades in this area typically 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.

This nursing home also was given an A+ long-term care grade, making it one of the few facilities to receive more than one A+ category grades. When nursing homes receive this type of score in long-term care it is a good sign for patient care and suggests that the nursing home is well-staffed with nurses and aids. On top of assessing the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 98.445595 percent of its residents, which is very impressive. Pneumonia is too frequently a life threatening health condition for nursing home residents so we prefer when a facility does not leave this to chance. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

In addition, this facility also received favorable nursing grades this year. In fact, we awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B+. When determining a facility's nursing rating, we assess the quantity of hours nurses are seeing patients as well as the level of skill of those nurses. This nursing home averages 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this facility 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 typically be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of turning a patient at least once a day.

The final area we analyzed was short-term care. In that category, we awarded this nursing home a decent grade of C. This actually proved to be this nursing home's weakest area. In computing our short-term care grades, we analyze a nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other types of therapists. This grade is typically a useful measure of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of residents who ultimately were able to return home from this facility. We found that 4.3 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was quite a bit below average.