Encore at Turf Valley

In addition to performing well overall, this facility earned an excellent short-term care grade. We gave it an A in that area. In calculating these short-term care grades, we look at the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our goal is to create a measure for comparing the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last statistic we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients that ultimately returned home from the facility. We found that 6.5 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

Adding to its impressive category grades, this nursing home also excelled in the area of inspections, where it received a grade of A-. Our inspection ratings weigh a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better scores in this area tend to have few of these severe deficiencies. 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. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

Another one of this facility's impressive category grades came in the area of nursing care. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B+. We scrutinized the licensure of nurses employed by the facility, in addition to the quantity of hours the nurses were with patients, in computing our rating in this area. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at 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 country 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 having a protocol of moving residents at least once a day.

Switching gears to our last area, this nursing home also excelled in our long-term care category. We gave it a grade of B+ for that area. This wrapped up a very impressive report card. Long-term care ratings of this caliber generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. After we finished assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 91.21951 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.