Hebrew Home of Greater Washington

We also want to emphasize that this facility received an impressive grade of A in our short-term care category. In calculating our short-term care ratings, we analyze the nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other licensed professionals. This rating is more often than not a solid measure of a facility's rehabilitation. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last statistic we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients that ultimately were able to return home from the facility. We found that 6.2 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

Adding to this facility's impressive resume, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A for our inspections rating. Arguably the most important factor we look at in computing our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a facility's inspection reports. Facilities with better grades in this category typically dodged the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G through L. This means the inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

To complement its strong performance in other areas, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A for our inspections rating. We looked at the licensure of nurses at the facility, in addition to the number of hours the nurses worked with residents, in computing our score in this area. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by having a system of turning residents even once per day.

In our final area, we awarded this facility an A for our long-term care grade. This rounded out a very impressive report card. When facilities receive this kind of score in long-term care it is usually a good sign for resident care and suggests that the place is well-staffed with nurses aids. On top of looking at the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 94.81481 percent of its patients, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia is often a dangerous condition for nursing home patients so we prefer when a nursing home does not take any chances. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.