Health & Rehabilitation Center at Thomas Circle

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it received an A+ nursing grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. Our nursing score focuses on the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We weigh both the levels of skill of those nurses and the amount of time spent with residents. This nursing home provided 6.3 hours of nursing care per patient per day, which is among the better totals in the country. A significant portion of those hours were provided by registered nurses, which are one of the most highly skilled levels of nurses. We were really impressed by both of these figures. On top of offering impressive levels of care, this facility was also above average in several of the major quality measures we looked at in this category. For example, it performed well in the area of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. These metrics are generally good indicators of the quality of nursing care a facility provides.

This nursing home also was given an A+ for its short-term care score. Our short-term care grades are crucial for patients seeking rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually utilizes higher levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes a broad spectrum of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other types of therapy. This facility excelled at the highest level in two key staffing areas we looked at. It offered about 50% more care from registered nurses and physical therapists than a typical facility. This is an encouraging sign. Finally, we looked at the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that it outperformed the vast majority of nursing homes in this area with 71.6 percent of its patients returning home.

The next category we looked at was long-term care. Adding to its strong profile, this nursing home also excelled in this category. In fact, it received a grade of of A in the area. When nursing homes receive this type of grade in long-term care it is a good sign for patient care and indicates that the nursing home is well-staffed with nurses and aids. After looking at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 96.969696 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is more than the average nursing home. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Finally, we also wanted to emphasize this nursing home's nearly flawless government inspections in recent years. We awarded them an impressive grade of B+ in this category. This finishes off a very strong report card for this facility. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in calculating these inspection grades. One of those factors is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some of these are quite insignificant. Although this place had some deficiencies on its report, none of them were major deficiencies based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.