Hanover Nursing Center

Although we graded this facility incredibly poorly overall, it earned a very impressive government inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our better scores in that category with a B+. Perhaps the most important factor we consider in computing our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a facility's inspection reports. It is typically best to avoid nursing homes that have a long list of severe deficiencies. Unfortunately, this nursing home was hit with a category L deficiency, which is not what we expected based on its inspection rating. These are the most concerning deficiencies. This category of deficiency means the government inspectors identified a widespread deficiency placing patient health or safety in imminent danger. Even a single serious deficiency of this nature should be taken seriously. While other aspects of this nursing home's inspection report were favorable, we have some reservations.

Surprisingly, we gave this facility a grade of C for our short-term care grade, which really isn't a bad grade. In the category of short-term care, we strive to evaluate measures of a nursing home's rehabilitation. We assess a facility's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and physical therapists. In this place's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than a typical facility. The hope is that this does not adversely impact the quality of care. Finally, we considered the number of patients who ultimately returned home from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was well below average.

We also wanted to draw your attention to this facility's poor nursing grade where it received an F. The nursing rating weighs a host of factors. The most heavily weighted variable is the amount of time nurses spent with residents. This nursing home provided a meager 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing ratings. This nursing home fared well in the area of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. Many consider these areas to be reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The next area we scored is long-term care. We gave it an F in this area, which is a very poor grade. Long-term care scores in this range generally are a bad sign for the quantity and quality of care provided by nurses and aids. On top of assessing the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. We were a bit bothered by the fact that this facility provided the vaccine to only 25.000002 percent of its residents. To our surprise, this place was actually decent at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. This was its best feature in this category.