Forest Hill

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received an impressive grade of A in our short-term care category. Our short-term care scores are probably more meaningful for those requiring rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation usually utilizes higher levels of skilled nursing services. This means not only nursing services, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 6 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

Adding to its impressive resume, this nursing home also excelled in our nursing category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A for that category. Nursing grades are primarily based on a nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed very well in terms of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Adding to this facility's impressive resume, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A for our inspections rating. Inspection ratings weigh several 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 grades in this category tend to have very few of these severe deficiencies. While this nursing home had a few deficiencies on its report, none were severe based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

The last category we analyzed is long-term care, where this facility received a grade of A. This completed a very strong profile. Few nursing homes earned an A- or higher in every category. Long-term care ratings of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. Once we assessed the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is significantly higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.