Kendal on Hudson

We also wanted to point out that this facility earned near flawless health inspections in recent years. We awarded them an A+ in this category. Arguably the most critical factor we consider in calculating our inspection grades is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Facilities with better scores in this category most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. Fortunately, although this place had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those 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. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also received an A+ nursing grade, making it one of the few nursing homes to receive multiple A+ category grades. Nursing scores are primarily based on a facility's nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

In the next category we analyzed, this facility was given quality marks in the category of short-term care. For this reason, it was given one of our most impressive scores in that area with a grade of of A+. In calculating our short-term care ratings, we scrutinize the nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other types of therapists. This rating is often a reliable assessment of the nursing home's ability to rehabilitate patients. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last metric we considered in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We found that 6.2 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

Moving on to the final area, this nursing home was awarded a very strong long-term care rating. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A in this area, rounding out a straight A profile. Facilities that excel in long-term care typically provide patients with more supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. After considering the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia. Vaccines are critical to keeping patients healthy. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.