Kendal on Hudson

In addition to being a great overall grade, this facility also received A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. Inspection ratings weigh several factors, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these items by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. While this nursing home had some deficiencies on its inspection report, none were severe based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Another reason we rated this nursing home so highly is that it received an A+ nursing grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. Nursing scores are heavily correlated with quality and quantity of nursing care. This particular nursing home provided 0.7 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of moving a resident even once per day.

The next area we looked at is long-term care. This facility also was awarded an A+ long-term care grade, making it one of the few nursing homes to receive more than one A+ category scores. Long-term care scores in this range generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. After we finished looking at the volume of care provided by nurses, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia sadly is often a life threatening ailment for nursing home patients so we prefer when a facility does not leave its residents vulnerable. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

In the final category we analyzed, this facility was awarded great scores in the area of short-term care also. As a result, it was awarded an A+. This rendered it one of the few of facilities we awarded A+'s in all four categories. Our short-term care ratings are believed to be more critical for residents requiring rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation usually mandates higher levels of skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not just nursing services, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final measure we considered in this area is the percentage of patients who who were able to eventually return home from the facility. 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.