Hartwell Health and Rehabilitation

On top of performing well in its overall grade, this nursing home performed at an even higher level in the area of inspections. 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 score of A+. Inspection ratings are based on several pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that score well in this category typically have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. Fortunately, although this nursing home had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G through L. This means the government inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Contributing to this facility's list of accomplishments, it also was awarded a high-end long-term care grade. We awarded them an elite strong of A in this area. Facilities that do well in this category typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to residents. In addition to considering the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia is often a deadly condition for nursing home residents so we prefer when a nursing home does not take any chances. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This facility's next best category grade came in the area of nursing. In that category, we gave this nursing home a grade of B-. This wasn't quite on par with some of its other category grades mentioned above. Our nursing rating assesses many datapoints, most of which are based on quantities of nurse staffing. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This figure is significantly below the national average. Lastly, although this place got docked a bit for its nursing hours per resident, it excelled in some of our quality metrics. With fewer than five percent of its patients experiencing pressure ulcers, it did remarkably well in this subcategory.

The last area we rated is short-term care, was this facility's weakest area. We awarded this nursing home a grade of D in that category. This really was one of just a couple of weak points of a very solid profile. In crafting our short-term care grades, we quantify the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our goal is to devise a scale for sizing up the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. In this nursing home's case, we found that it provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. Finally, we assessed the number of patients that who were able to eventually return home from this facility. This facility didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 4.7 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.