Helmwood Healthcare Center

The primary reason this turned out to be a decent nursing home is that it received an elite inspection score. Its inspection grade was far better than its overall score. In the inspections category, we gave this facility an A+. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in calculating our inspection grades. One critical factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some are relatively 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.

Additionally, we gave this nursing home a B+ in our long-term care category. This happens to be one of our more impressive scores. For patients in need of a permanent place to live rather than skilled nursing, long-term care grades are an important measure. On top of looking at 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 83.61582 percent of its residents, which is a few points lower than we anticipated. Although its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we hoped for, we were pleased to find facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This nursing home's nursing grade appears to be one of its better features. The facility received a grade of C in this category. When computing a facility's nursing rating, we weigh the amount of time nurses are with residents and the level of skill of those nurses. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other nursing homes. Lastly, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics. Although this facility got dinged a bit for nursing hours per resident, it excelled in a few of these quality-based metrics. With fewer than five percent of its residents experiencing pressure ulcers, it did remarkably well in this subcategory. This is typically a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by having a protocol of moving a patient at least once a day.

The last area we scored was short-term care, which was this facility's least impressive area. We awarded this facility a grade of D in this category. Unfortunately, this score pulled down the facility's overall grade a bit. In calculating our short-term care scores, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The objective is to formulate a tool for sizing up the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. In this facility's case, it looks like it provides fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per patient than a typical facility. Lastly, we assessed the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that just 3.8 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.