Linden Court

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it earned a very impressive inspection grade. Inspections turned out to be its best category. In that category, we awarded this nursing home an A. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing these inspection scores. One key factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some are relatively insignificant. Although this facility had a few deficiencies on its report, none of them were severe based on CMS' scale. We should point out that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in this industry.

Contributing to its first-rate resume, this facility also performed well in our short-term care area. In fact, we gave it a grade of A for the area. Short-term care grades are often employed to measure a nursing home's rehabilitation services. In order to provide highly rated rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to provide better levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other licensed professionals. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 5.5 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

Adding to its strong resume, this facility also received an excellent nursing score, with a grade of A-. When computing a facility's nursing score, we consider the amount of time nurses commit to residents as well as the level of licensure of those nurses. This nursing home provides 0.4 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 place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can many times be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The next area we assessed is long-term care, where this nursing home was given a B-. This actually ended up being this nursing home's worst area. This is still a middle of the pack score. In calculating our long-term care scores, we analyze the facility's ability to maintain its permanent residents' health and quality of life. On top of assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. Candidly, we were a bit alarmed this facility administered the vaccine to just 75.76602 percent of its residents. Nevertheless, this facility excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.