Kingston Health Care Center

On top of having a decent overall score, we also would like to point out that this nursing home received favorable health inspections in recent years. We gave them one of our better grades in this area, with a B+. This is a notably better score than the facility's overall grade. Our inspection scores are tied to many datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that excel in this category typically have few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these places should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. While this facility had some minor dings on its 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 health or safety. A few minor deficiencies shouldn't stop you from considering a nursing home.

The second highest grade we gave this nursing home in any area came in the category of nursing, where we gave it a grade of B-. Nursing ratings are based in large part on levels of nurse staffing. This facility averages 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident each day, which is not an impressive total. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures. Although this place got dinged a bit for nursing hours per resident, it excelled in a few of these quality-based measures. With less than five percent of its residents suffering from pressure ulcers, it fared very well in this area. This is often an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by having a policy of turning patients more often.

This facility's next most favorable category is its long-term care grade, where it received a C. For patients looking for a permanent place to live rather than rehabilitation, long-term care grades are an important measure. After looking at the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is more than the majority of nursing homes. This facility also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The next area we looked at is short-term care, which turned out to be a weak spot for this facility. We gave this nursing home a grade of D in our short-term care category. With our short-term care score, we attempt to create a sound barometer for rehabilitation services. In doing so, we assess a nursing home's level of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. As you might expect, we found that this place offers far less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than the average nursing home. Finally, we assessed the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that just 3.2 percent of this facility's residents returned home.