Heron Point of Chestertown

On top of being a first rate nursing home overall, this nursing home also excelled in the area of nursing, where it received an A+. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. Nursing grades are based largely on nurse staffing levels. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well in terms of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

On the list of its many high-end grades, this nursing home received an excellent short-term care score. In fact, we gave it a score of A in this area. Short-term care grades are based in part on the nursing home's quantity of highly-skilled nursing services. This means a broad spectrum of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we considered the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

This facility has received near flawless health inspections in recent years. We awarded them an impressive grade of A in this category. These inspection grades take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these items by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This facility was assessed 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none of the deficiencies were considered to be major deficiencies. This indicates that the inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies to be an imminent risk to resident health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

The final category we analyzed is long-term care, where this facility was awarded an A-. This completed an elite report card. Few nursing homes earned an A- or better in in each area we assessed. Facilities that receive this kind of grade in long-term care typically provide consistent 24/7 care to make sure patients are well cared for. Once we assessed the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents out of the hospital. Clearly, this place 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 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.