Forest Hill Nursing 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. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing these inspection grades. One key factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these end up being relatively insignificant. While this facility had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the government 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.

This nursing home fared well in the area of long-term care. Indeed, we awarded it a grade of A for that category, which turns out to be one of our most favorable scores. Nursing homes that receive this kind of grade in this category typically provide consistent around the clock care to make sure patients are kept in good health. One of the criteria we considered on top of nurse's aid hours was vaccinations. This facility provided the pneumonia vaccination to 96.585365 percent of its residents. This is a great way to avoid unnecessary hospitalizations for the aged 65 and up population. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.05 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This facility's next best category was its nursing grade, where it received a grade of B-. While this didn't quite match its scores in some of the categories discussed above, this is still a decent score. Our nursing rating is mostly tied to a nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This facility provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Lastly, despite not having the highest total nursing hours per resident, this facility performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is generally an indicator that a place has sufficient quality controls in place.

The next area we scored is short-term care. In that area, we awarded this facility a solid grade of C. This actually proved to be this facility's weakest area. Our short-term care ratings are arguably most important for residents needing rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation usually requires higher levels of skilled nursing. This includes not merely nursing services, 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. However, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 4.6 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most nursing homes, closer to half of their patients are able to return home so this figure is below average.