Hessmer Nursing Home

On top of performing well in its overall grade, this nursing home performed at an even higher level in the area of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A+. Arguably the most important factor we look at in determining our inspection grades is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Facilities with higher scores in this area typically dodged the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. We weren't able to track down deficiency data for this facility. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home fared well in the category of long-term care. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A for that area, which happens to be one of our most elite grades. Nursing homes that receive this kind of score in long-term care tend to provide consistent around the clock care to ensure residents are kept in good health. In addition to looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia is too frequently a life or death condition for nursing home residents so we prefer when a facility doesn't leave its residents vulnerable. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

The third area we assessed was short-term care, where this nursing home's score wasn't quite as strong as some of its other grades. In that category, we gave this facility a D, which is not a very good grade. In the area of short-term care, we attempt to qualify measures of a facility's rehabilitation services. We analyze a facility's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and physical and occupational therapists. Unfortunately, we found that this nursing home provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. Finally, we looked at the percentage of patients that ultimately were able to return home from this facility. This nursing home didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

The next category we rated was nursing. Sadly, it received a lowly F for this category, which is a very poor grade. You shouldn't necessarily disqualify a nursing home because of a single weak category though. Our nursing score focuses on the facility's level of nurse staffing. We consider both the levels of skill of the nurses as well as the quantity of hours spent with residents. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in computing our nursing scores. This nursing home fared well in the area of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these data points to be measures of the quality of nursing care.