Garrett Regional Medical Center

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. Inspection ratings weigh several factors, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can find more information about each of these items by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. It doesn't look like we have deficiency counts for this nursing home. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also was given an A+ for its short-term care grade. With our short-term care category, we seek to create a fair barometer for rehabilitation. In this process, we look at a nursing home's level of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last item we assessed in this category is the percentage of residents who were able to return home from the facility. We found that 7.2 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

Building on its high-end assessment, this nursing home also was given a dominant long-term care score, with a grade of A. If you are looking for anything other than short-term rehabilitation, you should take a close look at long-term care grades. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. Unfortunately, we weren't able to locate information about this nursing home's vaccination rates. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The fourth category we rated is nursing, where this facility was given an A. This wrapped up a very strong report card. Few facilities received an A- or better in in each area we assessed. In calculating a facility's nursing rating, we consider the number of hours nurses are with patients and the level of licensure of those nurses. This nursing home averages 0.8 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.