Hackett Hill Healthcare Center

One of the many reasons this place ended up being a great nursing home is it earned an A+ in our inspections category. This is simply as good as it gets in this very important area. Perhaps the most critical factor we look at in calculating our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Facilities with higher scores in this category most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This nursing home was assessed 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered to be severe. This means that CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies to create an imminent threat to patient health or safety. We should point out that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in this industry.

This facility also was given an A+ short-term care grade, rendering it one of the few facilities to be awarded multiple A+ category scores. With our short-term care rating, we attempt to forge a valuable gauge for rehabilitation services. In doing so, we assess the facility's levels of highly-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 every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the number of residents that returned home from this facility. We found that 6.4 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

To complement its strong performance in other areas, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. Nursing grades are based largely on quality and quantity of nursing care. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of turning a resident even once per day.

Switching gears to our last category, this nursing home received an extremely favorable long-term care score. We gave it an A- in this area, rounding out a straight A profile. Nursing homes that excel in this category typically provide patients with closer supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. After assessing the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is far higher than the majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.04 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.