North Winds Living Center

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. Inspection scores are based on several pieces of information found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that excel in this category typically have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these facilities should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

This nursing home performed well in our nursing category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A- for that category, which is one of our highest scores. In calculating our nursing ratings, we analyze both the number of hours nurses spend with residents and the training levels of those nurses. This facility provided 0 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics 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 generally be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by having a policy of turning a patient even once per day.

Additionally, this facility also was given favorable short-term care scores in our assessment. Indeed, we awarded it one of our more favorable scores in that area, with a grade of B. In determining our short-term care ratings, we look at a facility's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. This area is generally a reliable measure of a nursing home's ability to rehabilitate patients. It doesn't appear that this facility submitted information about its staffing of registered nurses or physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the number of residents who ultimately were able to return home from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.

The next area we analyzed was long-term care. This facility was awarded a favorable long-term care rating in our assessment, with a grade of B-. Although this was not quite as good as many of its other category grades, this is nevertheless an acceptable grade in this area. For residents looking for a permanent residence rather than skilled nursing, long-term care grades are very important. Once we assessed the quantity of nursing care, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination statistics. Candidly, we were a bit bothered by the fact that this nursing home vaccinated a relatively low 81.63265 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Nevertheless, this nursing home was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.