The Residence 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. The nursing rating is based on quite a few subcategories, but the main one is the number of nurse hours spent with patients. This facility provided 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place District of Columbia in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by having a policy of turning residents at least once a day.

This nursing home received quality marks in the category of short-term care. As a result, it was given one of our most impressive scores in that category with a score of A+. In calculating our short-term care grades, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The objective is to devise a barometer for comparing the rehabilitation services of different facilities. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 7.2 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

This nursing home also was awarded a very impressive long-term care score. This actually is this facility's third strongest category score. In that category, we awarded this facility a score of A. When facilities receive this kind of grade in long-term care it is usually a good sign for patient care and indicates that the place is well-staffed with nurses and aids. In addition to assessing the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 96.969696 percent of its patients, which is more than the majority of nursing homes. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Lastly, we looked at the area of inspections. This facility earned a very impressive grade in this category. In that category, we gave this facility a B+. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing our inspection grades. One key factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some can be relatively minor. This facility was assessed 8 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered to be major deficiencies. This indicates that the government inspectors didn't deem any of these deficiencies to cause an immediate risk to resident health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.