Falls Village Retirement Community

To go along with its favorable overall performance, we awarded this place an A+ for the area of inspections. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating these inspection grades. One of those factors is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies can be relatively insignificant. This nursing home received 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered severe. This indicates that CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies to pose an imminent threat to resident safety or health. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

This facility was awarded a favorable short-term care score as well. We awarded it one of our higher grades in that category with a score of B. In determining these short-term care grades, we look at the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The objective is to create a tool for comparing the rehabilitation services of various facilities. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final statistic we assessed in this category is the percentage of patients that ultimately were able to return home from the facility. We found that 5.7 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

The next highest grade we gave this nursing home came in the category of nursing, where we gave it a grade of B-. This wasn't quite as good as some of its other scores, but a grade in this range is not the end of the world. Nursing ratings are based in large part on quality and quantity of nursing care. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this place fared better in some of the quality measures we looked at. In fact, it performed well in the area of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be measures of the quality of nursing care. In many cases, the quality of nursing care is every bit as important as the quantity of hours of care offered.

The next category we scored is long-term care. We gave it a C in that area. This is a perfectly acceptable grade in this area. If you are looking for anything other than short-term rehabilitation, you should take a close look at each nursing home's long-term care ratings. On top of considering the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 99.14894 percent of its patients. This nursing home was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.