Halcyon House

In addition to being a great overall grade, this facility also received A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. Perhaps the most significant factor we consider in determining our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Places with higher grades in this area typically dodged the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. This nursing home was hit with 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This indicates that CMS did not consider any of these deficiencies an immediate risk to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

One of the other reasons we rated this nursing home so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing grade. Nursing turned out to be its second best category grade. In that area, we gave this nursing home an A+. Nursing grades are based largely on quantity of nursing care available. This nursing home averages 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well when it comes to minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Adding to its strong resume, this facility also was awarded an excellent long-term care grade, with a grade of A. Nursing homes that receive this type of grade in long-term care typically provide consistent around the clock care to ensure patients are well cared for. After considering the quantity of nursing care, we next considered the facility's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia sadly can be a deadly ailment for nursing home residents so we like it when a nursing home doesn't take any chances. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Switching gears to the next category, this nursing home was awarded an excellent short-term care score. We awarded it a B+ in that area, completing one of our more favorable report cards. Our short-term care grade is commonly used to grade a facility's performance with rehabilitation. To have good rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must feature better levels of highly skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other highly skilled individuals. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 4.7 percent of this facility's patients returned home.