Jennings Terrace

This facility earned a solid overall grade as described above, but we really wanted to point out its excellent inspection reports in recent years. We awarded them an impressive grade of A in this category. Perhaps the most critical factor we look at in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher scores in this area most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. While this place had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G through L. This means CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor made us feel better about this inspection report.

We also awarded this nursing home a solid score in the area of short-term care, where we gave it a B-. Our short-term care scores are meaningful for residents seeking rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally requires higher levels of highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means a vast spectrum of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the percentage of patients that ultimately were able to return home from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was well below the national average.

The third area we graded is long-term care, where this nursing home was given a C in this area. Our long-term care grade is used to score a facility's performance as a traditional nursing home, as opposed to focusing on the skilled nursing services provided by a rehabilitation facility. In addition to looking at the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. We found that this nursing home provided the vaccine to just 73.19588 percent of its patients, which is a bit of a concern. On a more positive note, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The last category we scored is nursing, proved to be this facility's least impressive category. We gave this nursing home a grade of D in that category. This is one of the couple of dings in an otherwise impressive profile. Our nursing score assesses the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We consider both the levels of skill of the nurses and the amount of time spent with patients. 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. To go along with its subpar totals in the area of nursing hours per patient, this facility also didn't fare as well in the quality-based measures we looked at in computing our nursing ratings. We looked at the percent of residents experiencing major falls and pressure ulcers. This facility had more falls and pressure ulcers than the average facility. This may be a bad sign when you consider that many bed sores and falls are believed to be preventable with better nursing care. Unfortunately, these statistics pulled down this nursing home's nursing rating significantly.