Hammond Health Services

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. Arguably the most significant factor we consider in computing our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places with higher scores in this area typically avoided the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. 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.

Contributing to its impressive resume, this facility also excelled in our long-term care category. In fact, we awarded it a score of A for the category. Facilities that do well in this category typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to patients. After assessing the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is significantly higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Among its many impressive grades, this facility received an excellent nursing grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of A in that category. In determining a facility's nursing score, we look at the quantity of hours nurses are with residents as well as the level of licensure of those nurses. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures 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 facility the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by having a policy of turning a resident even once per day.

The final category we analyzed is short-term care, where this nursing home was awarded a grade of A-. This completed a first-rate profile. Few nursing homes earned an A- or better in in each area we assessed. In determining our short-term care grades, we scrutinize a facility's levels of skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other highly trained professionals. This grade is typically a reliable assessment of the nursing home's rehabilitation. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last statistic we assessed in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home.