Golden Age Nursing Home

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it received an A+ long-term care grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. Long-term care grades of this caliber generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. Once we assessed the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is significantly higher than the average nursing home. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Turning to our inspection category, this nursing home excelled in that area, which is based on the facility's government inspections. In fact, we awarded it an A for that category. Inspection ratings weigh several factors, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these items by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This facility received 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe deficiencies. This indicates that CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies to create an imminent risk to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also excelled in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of A. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. In calculating our nursing grades, we assess both nursing hours and the skill levels of the nurses. This facility provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of moving patients more frequently.

Moving on to our next category, this facility was awarded a high-end short-term care grade. In fact, we gave it a B+ in this category, finishing off one of our finer report cards. Our short-term care scores are likely more critical for people needing rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation usually utilizes additional highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes not only nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.