Governor Bacon Health Center

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this nursing home received an A+ for nursing. Our nursing grade is mostly tied to the nursing home's nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.9 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This nursing home also was awarded an A+ long-term care grade, rendering it one of the few nursing homes to receive more than one A+ category scores. Long-term care scores of this caliber generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. One of the datapoints we considered after nursing hours was vaccinations. This nursing home provided the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. This is a great way to avoid unnecessary deaths and hospitalizations for the nursing home population. 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 only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This facility also received a nearly flawless inspection report. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A+. Inspection ratings account for a host of factors included in a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we look at is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with better grades in this area tend to have very few of these severe deficiencies. While this place had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Switching gears to the next category, this facility was awarded a strong short-term care rating. In fact, we gave it a grade of A in that area, resulting in this facility receiving straight A's. In forming our short-term care grades, we analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The objective is to formulate a barometer for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last measure we looked at in this area is the number of residents that eventually returned home from the nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.