Highlandspring of Fort Thomas

We also wanted to emphasize that this nursing home earned near flawless government inspections recently. We gave them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. Our inspection scores account for a host of factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher scores in this area typically have few severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

On the list of its many impressive scores, this nursing home received an excellent long-term care grade. In fact, we gave it a score of A in that category. Nursing homes that do well in long-term care tend to be well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to residents. Once we concluded our assessment of the volume of nursing care, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia tragically can be a life threatening condition for nursing home patients so we prefer when a nursing home doesn't take any chances. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This facility is also strong in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of B+. It outperformed most nursing homes in this category. The nursing grade weighs a handful of subcategories, many of which are based on quantities of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as employing a protocol of turning patients more frequently.

The last area we looked at was short-term care. In this category, we awarded this facility an impressive grade of B. Our short-term care grades are probably most important for those needing a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually mandates more skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes not just nursing services, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final datapoint we assessed in this category is the number of patients that who were able to eventually return home from the facility. We found that 4.7 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.