Friendship Village Health Center

To pair with a strong overall score, we awarded this place an A+ for our inspections rating. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating our inspection ratings. One key factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some can be relatively insignificant. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A couple minor deficiencies are not the end of the world.

One of the other reasons we rated this facility so favorably is that it received a dominant short-term care grade. In fact, short-term care ended up being its second highest category score. In that category, we gave this facility a score of A. With our short-term care grade, we seek to forge a valuable barometer for rehabilitation. In this process, we analyze a nursing home's offerings of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the number of patients that were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 6.4 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

Turning to an additional strength for this nursing home, we awarded them one of our stronger scores in our long-term care category as well, with a B. Nursing homes that receive this type of score in long-term care tend to provide consistent 24/7 care to make sure residents are kept in good health. After looking at the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is significantly higher than the average nursing home. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

The final area we looked at was nursing, in which this nursing home was given a B-. While this turned out to be its least impressive category rating, this is nevertheless nothing to be ashamed of. There are several factors included in this grade. Most of the data points are tied to staffing levels. This nursing home provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident each day. This is a low total compared to most other nursing homes. Finally, our nursing scores also consider some quality-focused measures. We look at the percent of patients who sustained pressure ulcers and major falls. These data points are measures of the quality of nursing care, since better care tends to reduce these problems.