Hillsboro House Nursing Home

Hillsboro House Nursing Home is the sole option we found in Hillsborough, New Hampshire. Sporting an overall grade of A+, this facility is ranked among the most impressive nursing homes we looked at. We were so impressed with this nursing home that we ranked it as one of the 25 best nursing homes in New Hampshire. If you look further down this page, you will see this facility's category ratings, which appear to be equally strong as its overall score.

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. The nursing rating analyzes a handful of subcategories, but the primary one is the level of nurse hours spent with patients. This facility provided 3.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at 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 place the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as having a system of turning a patient at least once a day.

This facility also received a virtually flawless inspection report. As a result, it received one of our highest scores in that category with an A+. This was one of the few places to receive multiple A+ category grades. Inspection grades weigh a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we weigh heavily is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better grades in this category usually have very few of these severe deficiencies. While this facility had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also was given a fine short-term care grade. This actually is its third strongest category score. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A. Our short-term care ratings are critical for people needing rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally utilizes higher levels of skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes a broad spectrum of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. When we assessed this facility's nursing hours, we found it offered more care from registered nurses than most nursing homes. Lastly, we assessed the number of patients who returned to the community from this nursing home. This place outperformed the overwhelming majority of facilities in the country in this area with 85.5 percent of its residents returning home.

The final area we looked at is long-term care, where this facility was given an A. This rounded out an elite report card. Not many facilities received an A- or better in every category. Nursing homes that do well in long-term care typically provide residents with better supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. After looking at the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is much higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. 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 only 0.68 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.