Haven Convalescent Home

While this nursing home's overall grade was decent, it really excelled in the area of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A+ for that category, which is one of our highest scores. Perhaps the most critical factor we consider in determining our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher grades in this area most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G through L. This means CMS 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.

Another one of this nursing home's more favorable category grades came in the category of long-term care. In that area, we gave this nursing home a B. Nursing homes that receive this type of score in this category typically provide consistent around the clock care to make sure residents are kept in good health. In addition to looking at the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is very impressive. Pneumonia tragically can be a deadly illness for nursing home residents so we strongly prefer when a facility doesn't leave this to chance. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

The third most favorable area we gave this nursing home in any category came in the area of short-term care, where we awarded it a B-. With our short-term care rating, we seek to forge a fair measure for rehabilitation services. In this process, we look at a nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. This nursing home employs both physical therapists and registered nurses. Not all facilities employ these skilled professionals. The final datapoint we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients who ultimately were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that just 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home. Unfortunately, this was below the national average.

The next area we assessed is nursing, proved to be this nursing home's least impressive area. We awarded this nursing home a grade of D in that area. This really is one of the few weak points of an otherwise impressive profile. We assessed the qualifications of nurses working for the nursing home, as well as the quantity of time those nurses spent with residents, in computing our score in this area. This nursing home averages 3.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day, which is below the national average. In addition to receiving below average scores for nursing hours, this place was a bit less impressive in some of the quality-based metrics we looked at in determining our nursing scores. We looked at the percent of residents suffering pressure ulcers and found that this facility was at roughly 150 percent of the national average in this metric. This is a bad sign when you consider that so many bed sores are believed to be preventable with better nursing care. This statistic really pulled down this facility's nursing rating substantially.