Lincoln Hills Health Center

The main reason this facility received a decent overall score is its impeccable inspections in recent years. We gave it one of our higher scores in that area, with an A-. This is a much better score than the place's overall score, which was decent but certainly not elite. Our inspection grades account for several factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One key criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better grades in this category tend to have few of these severe deficiencies. Although this place had some deficiencies on its report, none were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. A couple of minor deficiencies should not lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

One of this facility's more favorable category scores came in the area of short-term care. This proved to be its second most respectable category. In that category, we awarded this nursing home a grade of B-. In determining our short-term care grades, we assess the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The goal is to devise a scale for sizing up the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. We found that this nursing home was below average in the two key staffing areas we focus on. In fact, it supplied fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most other nursing homes. It is still important to determine whether this also correlates to a lower quality of care. The final measure we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 5.3 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is actually below average.

This nursing home's nursing grade appears to be one of its better features. The facility received a grade of C in this category. Our nursing rating assesses the facility's nurse staffing levels. We weigh both the levels of licensure of the nurses as well as the quantity of hours spent with patients. This nursing home averages just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this facility fared better in some of the quality measures we assessed. In fact, it performed well in terms of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is just as important as the number of hours of care provided.

The final category we looked at is long-term care. We awarded this nursing home a C in that area. Our long-term care grade is used to assess a facility's performance as a traditional convalescent home, as opposed to focusing on the skilled nursing services provided by a skilled nursing facility. Once we looked at the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 93.66755 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is slightly lower than we anticipated but still a reasonably acceptable figure. On a more positive note, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.