Epsom Healthcare Center

In addition to performing well overall, this nursing home also received nearly flawless government inspections. Consequently, it earned one of our highest grades in that category with an A+. Our inspection grades are tied to many items found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that excel in this category typically have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these places generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. While this facility had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This means that the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Among this facility's other achievements is its superb long-term care grade. It received one of our strongest grades in that category, with a grade of A-. When nursing homes receive this kind of score in long-term care it is usually a good sign for resident care and indicates that the facility is well-staffed with nurses and aids. On top of looking at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is far higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Turning to the category of nursing care, this facility didn't perform quite as well in this area as some of the categories discussed above. Nevertheless, a grade of B- in this category is by no means a bad score. The nursing grade weighs numerous datapoints. The most heavily weighted variable is the number of hours nurses spend with residents. This nursing home provides 0.2 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we were hoping for. Lastly, although this facility got docked a bit for its nursing hours, it actually excelled in some of our quality-based measures. With fewer than five percent of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, it performed remarkably well in this area.

The last area we rated was short-term care. This nursing home received an impressive short-term care grade in our assessment, with a B-. While this is not quite as good as several of its other scores, this is nevertheless an acceptable score for that area. Our short-term care grades are thought to be more critical for folks needing rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation generally requires more highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means not just nursing, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last item we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients that eventually returned home from the facility. We found that just 5.2 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.