Forest Hill Healthcare Center

In addition to performing well in its overall grade, this facility performed at an even higher level in the area of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A. Inspection grades take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these items by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This place was assessed 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe. This means that the inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies an imminent threat to patient safety or health. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor made us feel better about this inspection report.

An additional strong feature for this nursing home is that it was awarded a very positive short-term care score. In fact, this turned out to be its second best category score. In that category, we gave this facility a grade of B. Our short-term care grades are thought to be most important for those needing rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation typically mandates additional skilled nursing. This means not only nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final datapoint we assessed in this category is the number of patients that ultimately were able to return home from the facility. We found that 4.8 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

Turning to the third area, this nursing home also earned a grade of B for its long-term care rating. This is a well above average grade in this category. Nursing homes that do well in long-term care typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to residents. One of the criteria we considered on top of nursing hours is vaccines. This facility provided the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its residents. Vaccination is a great way to minimize unnecessary hospitalizations for the nursing home population. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The next area we analyzed was nursing. In this category, we awarded this facility a B-. We looked at the skill-level of nurses employed by the facility, as well as the quantity of time those nurses worked with residents, in determining our grade in this area. This place provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This is a relatively low total compared with most nursing homes. Finally, we look at quality-based statistics, such as the percentage of patients who suffered pressure ulcers and major falls. Sometimes these statistics are indicators of the quality of nursing care.