Forest Hill Nursing Center

One of the reasons this ended up being a strong facility is that it received an impressive inspection grade. In fact, inspections turned out to be its best category grade. In that category, we gave this facility an A. Our inspection scores are based on several datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that receive favorable grades in this area have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. Although this nursing home had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility received strong marks in the category of long-term care as well. Indeed, we awarded it one of our highest grades in that area with a area of A. Nursing homes that do well in long-term care tend to provide residents with closer supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. In addition to assessing the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 97.92746 percent of its residents, which is significantly higher than the majority of nursing homes. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

The next category we looked at was short-term care, where this facility was awarded a B- in this category. In the area of short-term care, we attempt to assess indicators of a nursing home's rehabilitation. We assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we considered the percentage of residents that returned home from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was actually quite a bit below average.

The last area we analyzed is nursing. This facility was awarded an above average nursing rating this year, with a B-. While this is not nearly as strong as a few of its other category grades, this is still a respectable grade for this area. In computing a nursing home's nursing score, we weigh the quantity of hours nurses are caring for residents as well as the levels of training of the nurses. This nursing home provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident daily. This is a relatively low total compared with most other nursing homes. Finally, despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours, this facility performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is typically a reliable indicator that a place has sufficient quality controls in place.