Highmore Health

While we were not high on this nursing home overall, we gave it a B- for inspections. This score is more respectable than this facility's overall score. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining our inspection grades. One critical factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some can be relatively minor. Fortunately, although this nursing home had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, CMS flagged this nursing home for possible abuse or neglect. This is not what you want to see. We advise you to direct your search elsewhere.

One of the other reasons we rated this nursing home so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing grade. In that category, we awarded this nursing home an B-. We scrutinized the qualifications of nurses at the facility, as well as the quantity of hours the nurses were with residents, in determining our rating in this area. This nursing home averages just 0 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this nursing home surprisingly fared better in some of the quality measures we looked at. It scored well in terms of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. Many consider these areas to be reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care. In many cases, the quality of nursing care is just as important as the number of hours of care offered.

This nursing home's next best category was its short-term care score, where it was given a grade of B-. In computing these short-term care grades, we quantify the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The objective is to create a scale for sizing up the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. In this facility's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than a typical facility. The hope is that this does not adversely impact the quality of care. Lastly, we considered the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most facilities, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.

Switching gears to our fourth area, this nursing home was given a B- in long-term care, which we consider to be a decent grade. In forming these long-term care ratings, we analyze the facility's personal care services. One of the criteria we considered after nurse's aid hours was vaccines. Fortunately, this facility provided the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. This place keeps its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.