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In addition to receiving a great overall score, this facility also earned first-rate government inspections in recent years. We awarded it one of our higher grades in this area, with an A. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating these inspection ratings. One key factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some of these are relatively insignificant. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to this facility's list of achievements, it also was awarded a superb long-term care grade. We gave them an impressive grade of A- in this category. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in this category it typically means it's well-staffed and is an overall good place to live on a permanent basis. Once we assessed the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia. Vaccines are critical to keeping residents healthy. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This nursing home also received a strong nursing score. In fact, we awarded it an above average grade of B in this area. Our nursing rating is based on many factors. The most heavily weighted one is the number of hours nurses spend with patients. This facility provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics 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 nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as having a protocol of turning residents more often.

Turning to our next category, we awarded this nursing home a grade of D for our short-term care category. This was the nursing home's worst category score. Sadly, this category pulled down the facility's overall profile to a certain degree. Our short-term care grade is commonly employed to gauge a facility's rehabilitation services. To offer high-end rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to feature better levels of skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other highly skilled individuals. In this facility's case, it looks like it provided fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than the average facility. The last item we looked at in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that just 4.4 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these subpar metrics sunk this nursing home's short-term care grade.