New England Sinai Hospital Transitional Care Unit

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A for our long-term care rating. Long-term care ratings in this range generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. Unfortunately, we were not able to find information about this nursing home's vaccination rates. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

We also want to alert you to the fact that this nursing home received a first-rate score of A in our short-term care category. Short-term care grades are generally employed to score a nursing home's performance with rehabilitation. In order to offer good rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally need to have higher levels of skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other highly skilled individuals. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last measure we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We found that 6.1 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

In addition, this nursing home also earned excellent inspections in recent years. We awarded it one of our best grades in that area, with a score of A. Inspection scores weigh several factors, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can learn more about each of these items by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. We weren't able to track down deficiency data for this nursing home. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Switching gears to our fourth category, this facility was given an excellent nursing grade. We gave it a grade of A- in this category, rounding out a straight A profile. Our nursing rating is largely based on a facility'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 place 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 nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by having a policy of moving a resident more often.