Northfield Village Retirement Community

This facility received a solid overall grade as described above, but we really wanted to point out its nearly flawless inspections in recent years. We gave them an A- in this category. Inspection grades account for several factors found on a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better grades in this category usually have very few of these severe deficiencies. While this facility had a few 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 tells you that the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A couple of minor deficiencies should not stop you from considering a nursing home.

Another one of this nursing home's higher category scores was in the category of short-term care. In that category, we awarded this facility a B. It actually outperformed most facilities in this category. Our short-term care grade is typically employed to gauge a facility's performance with rehabilitation. In order to provide highly scored rehabilitation services, facilities generally must offer higher levels of skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other types of therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 5.1 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

One of this facility's better category grades was in the area of nursing care. In that area, we gave this facility a grade of C. There are a number of subcategories included in this category. Most of these datapoints are tied to staffing levels. This particular facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident each day. This figure is significantly below average. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this facility surprisingly excelled in some of the quality-based metrics we looked at. In fact, it performed well in terms of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be measures of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is as important as the quantity of hours of care offered.

The last category we rated is long-term care, ended up being this facility's worst area. We gave this facility a grade of D in that category. In a long-term care environment, the nursing home's primary objective is to maintain patients' quality of life and keep them safe. On top of assessing the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is more than the majority of nursing homes. To our surprise, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility had fewer hospitalizations than the average nursing home. Sadly, some of its other scores in this category weren't as favorable as these.