Medilodge of Plymouth

One of the reasons this place ended up being a quality nursing home is that it earned an A+ in our inspections category. This is just about as good as it gets in this critical category. Perhaps the most significant factor we consider in calculating our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities with higher scores in this category most likely dodged the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. While this facility had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G through L. This tells you the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. We should note that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in the industry.

This facility also was elite in the area of short-term care, where we awarded it a grade of A-. Not many nursing homes fared better in this area. In determining these short-term care grades, we quantify the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our goal is to create a barometer for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different facilities. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final item we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients that eventually returned home from the nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

To complement its strong performance in other areas, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. In computing a facility's nursing score, we look at the amount of time nurses commit to patients as well as the level of skill of the nurses. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed very well in terms of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The final area we analyzed was long-term care, in which this facility received a grade of B-. This actually is this nursing home's least impressive area. This is still not a bad grade. For prospective patients seeking a permanent place to live as opposed to rehabilitation, long-term care grades are an important measure. One of the statistics we considered on top of nurse's aid hours is vaccinations. Fortunately, this nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its patients. Lastly, this facility was also able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.