Forest Hills Healthcare Center

Even though we graded this facility incredibly poorly overall, it received a decent short-term care score this year. We gave it a B- in that area, which was the closest thing to a bright spot we found for this facility. In forming our short-term care grades, we assess the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The objective is to create a measure for comparing the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. We were surprised to find that this place was below average in the two key staffing areas we focus on. The facility offered fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. It is still important to determine whether this also correlates to a lower quality of care. The last metric we looked at in this area is the number of residents that ultimately returned home from the nursing home. We found that just 5.5 percent of this facility's patients returned home. This figure was below the national average.

This facility's next best category was the area of inspections. Nevertheless, with a grade of just D in this category, it still performed relatively poorly. Inspection grades weigh several factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. You should be most cautious when considering a facility with severe deficiencies on its inspection reports. This particular nursing home was assessed 3 deficiencies by CMS. The only positive thing we found is that none of its deficiencies were in the categories that indicate that they created a threat to resident safety or health. Lastly, we want to draw your attention to the fact that this nursing home received significant government fines totaling over $100,000. This often signifies that a nursing home'spoor track record spanned more than one year.

In addition, we gave this facility an F in the area of nursing care. When determining a nursing home's nursing score, we consider the quantity of hours nurses commit to patients as well as the level of licensure of those nurses. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in calculating our nursing scores. This facility performed well in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these datapoints to be measures of the quality of nursing care.

The next area we looked at was long-term care. We gave it an F in this area, which is a poor score. If you are seeking services other than short-term rehabilitation, you should take a close look at each nursing home's long-term care grades. On top of assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 95.454544 percent of its residents, which is higher than the majority of nursing homes. Surprisingly, this facility was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had just 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. Unfortunately, a few of its other scores in this category were not as favorable as these.