Jacob Health Care Center

One of the reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received a very impressive short-term care rating. In fact, short-term care is its best category. In that area, we awarded this facility an impressive grade of A. In crafting these short-term care grades, we quantify the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our goal is to formulate a measure for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different facilities. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last measure we assessed in this category is the percentage of patients who ultimately were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that 6.2 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

This nursing home also performed well in the area of inspections. It earned a nearly flawless inspection report this year. It received one of our best scores in that area with an A-. Few nursing homes with an overall score in this range performed this well in multiple categories. Our inspection scores weigh a host of factors included in a facility's inspection reports. One key criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better grades in this category generally have few severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this nursing home had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspections are rare in the industry.

This facility really excelled in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of A-. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. In computing our nursing ratings, we weigh both staffing levels and the levels of licensure of those nurses. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this place 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 generally be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of turning a resident more often.

The next category we scored was long-term care. In that category, we awarded this facility a solid grade of C. This proved to be this nursing home's least impressive category. In our long-term care assessment, we assess the sheer quantity of care provided by a facility, as well as some qualitative measures. After assessing the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination statistics. We were optimistic to learn that this nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia. This place was able to keep 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.