N Y S Veterans Home

In addition to being an elite facility overall, this nursing home also excelled in the area of inspections, where it received a grade of A+. Few nursing homes fared this well in this area. These inspection ratings weigh several factors, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these issues by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received an impressive grade of A in our nursing category. Nursing ratings are largely based on a nursing home's nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures 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 nursing home the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a system of moving residents more often.

This facility also was given a top-shelf short-term care score. This actually ended up being this facility's third most impressive category grade. In that category, this facility received a grade of A. Short-term care grades are commonly employed to grade a nursing home's rehabilitation services To offer good rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to have better levels of skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other licensed professionals. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last datapoint we considered in this area is the number of residents who who were able to eventually return home from the facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

The final category we analyzed is long-term care, where this facility was given an A-. This topped off an elite profile. Few nursing homes earned an A- or better in all four categories. Facilities that excel in long-term care tend to provide residents with more supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. Once we looked at the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Vaccines are critical to keeping residents out of the hospital. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.