Fairhaven Community

One of the reasons this ended up being a quality nursing home is that it earned an A+ inspection grade. This is as good as it gets in this very important category. These inspection scores take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these issues by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Unfortunately, we were not able to find deficiency counts for this nursing home. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

One of the other reasons we graded this facility so favorably is that it was given a favorable long-term care score. In fact, long-term care is its second highest category score. In that category, we gave this facility a grade of A. Nursing homes that excel in this category tend to be well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to residents. After considering the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents healthy. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

We also awarded this nursing home a solid grade in the area of short-term care, with a B-. Short-term care ratings are crucial for people needing rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally mandates more skilled nursing. This includes a broad range of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. It does not appear that this nursing home submitted registered nurse or physical therapist staffing data. The last metric we assessed in this area is the number of residents who ultimately were able to return home from the facility. We found that just 5.4 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home. This figure was below the national average.

The last area we graded is nursing. This nursing home was given an impressive nursing rating this year, with a C. Even though this is not quite as elite as a few of its other category grades, this is still a respectable rating in this category. Our nursing score is based on the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We look at both the levels of training of those nurses and the number of hours spent with residents. This place provides only 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident daily. This is a somewhat alarming figure which is well below the national average. Finally, our nursing scores also factor in some quality-focused statistics. We especially like to look at the percentage of patients who experienced pressure ulcers and major falls. These metrics are decent measures of the quality of nursing care, since better care can reduce these problems.