Friendship Manor

In addition to being a respectable nursing home overall, this place also excelled in the area of inspections, where it earned an A-. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining these inspection grades. One of those factors is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some of these end up being relatively insignificant. While this facility had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A couple minor deficiencies should not stop you from considering a nursing home.

One of this nursing home's more respectable category scores was in the area of long-term care. This ended up being its second most favorable category. In that area, we gave this facility a B-. Long-term care grades focus on a nursing home's personal care rather than the highly skilled therapy or medical services that are critical to a skilled nursing facility. After considering the volume of nursing care, we then looked at the facility's vaccination records. We were optimistic to find that this nursing home vaccinates 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia. Finally, this facility was also able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This facility's next best category was its nursing grade, where it received a grade of C. The nursing rating analyzes quite a few factors, most of which are based on quantities of nurse staffing. This place provided just 0.1 hours of nursing care per resident each day. This is a low total compared with most facilities. Lastly, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics. Although this facility got docked a bit for nursing hours, it actually excelled in some of these quality-based measures. With less than five percent of its residents experiencing pressure ulcers, it did remarkably well in this subcategory. This is typically a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a system of turning patients at least once a day.

The final category we analyzed was short-term care, which ended up being this facility's worst area. We gave this nursing home a D in this area. Our short-term care grades are based in part on a nursing home's quantity of highly-skilled nursing services. This means a vast spectrum of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, not to mention other variations of therapy. As you might expect, we learned that this place offers significantly less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than a typical nursing home. Finally, we considered the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that just 4.5 percent of this facility's patients returned home.