Fremont Healthcare Center

On top of being a first rate facility overall, this facility also excelled in nursing, where it earned an A. We weighed the licensure of nurses employed by the facility, in addition to the quantity of hours those nurses spent with patients, in computing our rating in this category. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by having a policy of moving patients more frequently.

Adding to this facility's impressive resume, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A- for our inspections rating. Inspection scores weigh a host of factors included in a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher grades in this category usually have few severe deficiencies. While this facility had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in the industry.

The next category we assessed is short-term care. Contributing to its high-end profile, this facility also excelled in that category. In fact, we gave it a of A- for the category. Our short-term care grade is typically used to grade a nursing home's performance with rehabilitation In order to provide good rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must have better levels of skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other licensed professionals. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of residents that who were able to eventually return home from this nursing home. We found that 5.2 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.

Switching gears to our next area, this facility was given a high-end long-term care rating. Although this isn't as good as some of its other grades, this is still one of the stronger scores a facility can receive. When facilities receive this kind of grade in this category it is usually a good sign for resident care and suggests that the place is well-staffed with nurses and aids. Once we finished looking at the amount of nursing care, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia is often a dangerous health condition for nursing home residents so we prefer when a facility does not take any chances. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.