Hanover House

While we were fairly low on this nursing home overall, we awarded it an A for our inspections rating. This score is far more impressive than the facility's overall score. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining these inspection ratings. One key factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some can be relatively minor. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G through L. This tells you that the inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A few minor deficiencies are not the end of the world.

This nursing home's next most favorable area is long-term care. We awarded it a grade of C in this area. This is basically a slightly below average score in this category. Our long-term care grade is commonly used to assess a facility's performance as a traditional convalescent home, as opposed to focusing on the skilled nursing services provided by a rehabilitation facility. On top of looking at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 99.18699 percent of its residents, which is better than the vast majority of nursing homes. This nursing home also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This facility's next best category was nursing, but even there it received a grade of just D. This is still a well below average grade. We looked at the qualifications of nurses at the facility, as well as the quantity of hours the nurses spent with residents, in determining our rating in this category. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This is well below average. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This facility fared well in terms of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these datapoints to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The next category we assessed was short-term care. Sadly, it received an F for this area, which is an abysmal grade. Short-term care ratings are important for people seeking rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally requires more skilled nursing services. This includes a vast spectrum of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other types of therapy. With a score in this range in this category, we were not surprised to discover this place was well below average in the two key staffing metrics we focus on. The nursing home provided far fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. This wasn't a strength for this facility. We found that just 4.9 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most facilities, about half of their residents are able to return home so this is well below average.