Northfield Hospital Long Term Care Center

On top of being a first rate facility overall, this nursing home also excelled in the category of nursing, where it received an A+. Few nursing homes fared better in this category. When calculating our nursing grades, we weigh both staffing levels and the levels of licensure of those nurses. This facility provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed very well in the area of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

To complement its top-shelf performance in other areas, we gave this facility a grade of A for its short-term care grade. In determining our short-term care grades, we size up the facility's levels of skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other highly skilled individuals. This rating is more often than not a solid measure of a facility's rehabilitation services. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of residents who were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

Tallying yet another strong category grade, this nursing home also excelled in the area of inspections, where it earned a score of A. Few facilities fared better in this category. Arguably the most critical factor we look at in calculating our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Nursing homes with better grades in this category most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This nursing home was hit with 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This indicates that CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies an immediate threat to resident health or safety. Remember that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in the industry.

The final area we assessed is long-term care, where this nursing home was awarded a grade of B. This actually ended up being this nursing home's weakest area. A nursing home is doing something right when it's lowest score still is superior to most facilities. Long-term care ratings of this caliber generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. On top of looking at the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is very impressive. Pneumonia is often a life threatening illness for nursing home residents so we like it when a nursing home does not roll the dice on this issue. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.