Friendship Home Association

We also found that this facility excelled in our long-term care rating. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. When nursing homes receive this kind of grade in this category it is a good sign for patient care and suggests that the place is well-staffed with nurses and aids. In addition to considering the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is significantly higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. 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 inspections, where this facility also received an A+ grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. Inspection ratings take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these issues by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Although this place had a few deficiencies on its report, none of them were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received an impressive grade of A in our nursing category. Our nursing grade assesses the facility's nurse staffing levels. We look at both the levels of skill of the nurses as well as the number of hours spent with patients. This nursing home averages 3.8 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at a few quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This facility excelled in these areas, with excellent scores for minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. These areas are generally reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care a nursing home provides.

The fourth area we assessed was short-term care, where this nursing home was given a B+. This finished off a very strong report card. Very few nursing homes earned a B+ or better in each of our categories. Our short-term care grades are based on a nursing home's quantity of highly-skilled nursing services. This means a broad range of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, not to mention other variations of therapy. We were pleased to find that this nursing home employs both registered nurses and physical therapists. The same can't be said for all nursing homes. The final measure we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients who eventually returned home from the nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.