Hallmark House Nursing Center

While we were not high on this facility's overall grade, it actually received a very impressive inspection report this year. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a grade of A-. Our inspection ratings weigh a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. You should avoid facilities with too many severe deficiencies flagged. This nursing home was assessed 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered severe. This indicates that the inspectors didn't deem any of these deficiencies an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A few minor deficiencies aren't the end of the world.

Sadly, this facility only received a D for its short-term care grade, which happens to be one of its higher category grades. Our short-term care ratings are arguably more critical for people needing rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation generally mandates higher levels of highly-skilled nursing. This includes not merely nursing services, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Given its score in this area, we weren't stunned to find that this facility was well below average in terms of its number of registered nurse and physical therapy hours provided to its patients based on the figures we assessed. Honestly, this was what we expected to find. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of residents who ultimately were able to return home from this facility. This nursing home didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 5.3 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was quite a bit off the national average.

Turning to the area of long-term care, this facility was given just a D in that category. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in long-term care it typically means the facility didn't perform well in our measures relating to patient care. In addition to assessing the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. As it turns out, this nursing home administered the vaccine to a relatively low 76.84211 percent of its residents, which is quite a bit lower than we expected. Surprisingly, this nursing home was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0.03 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this nursing home has fewer hospitalizations than most nursing homes. This was its best feature in this category.

The next category we graded is nursing, which was this facility's worst area. We gave this facility a grade of D in this category. Our nursing rating looks at the facility's level of nurse staffing. We look at both the levels of skill of those nurses as well as the quantity of hours spent with patients. This nursing home offered a meager 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient per day. This is an alarmingly low total. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in calculating our nursing grades. This place performed well in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.