Helen Hayes Hospital T C U

On top of being a great nursing home overall, it also received A+ inspections in recent years. Its inspections were nearly perfect. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating our inspection grades. One critical factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some end up being quite insignificant. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home received high marks in the area of short-term care. Consequently, it received one of our best scores in that category with a grade of A+. In crafting our short-term care scores, we look at the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The goal is to devise a barometer for comparing the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. We were pleased to find that this nursing home employs both registered nurses and physical therapists. The same can't be said for all nursing homes. Finally, we looked at the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 7 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

The next area we assessed is long-term care. Contributing to its elite profile, this nursing home also excelled in that area. In fact, it received a of A for that area. For long-term care residents, the primary goal is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. In addition to considering the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. We were not able to track down this place's vaccination data. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

In the final category we scored, this facility was given an impressive grade grade of A in our nursing category. With this grade, the nursing home completed a straight A report card. The nursing grade weighs a host of data points. The most important factor is the amount of time nurses spent with residents. This facility provided 0.8 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at certain nursing quality measures in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We view these areas as predictive measures of the caliber of nursing care provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.