Northwest Manor Health Care Center

One of the reasons this ended up being a quality nursing home is that it earned a very impressive grade in inspections. Inspections ended up being its best category. In this area, we gave this nursing home an A. Perhaps the most significant factor we look at in determining our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a facility's inspection reports. Places with higher grades in this area most likely dodged the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also was given a fine long-term care grade. Indeed, this is this nursing home's second strongest category grade. In that category, we gave this facility a score of A. Long-term care grades 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 also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 99.69788 percent of its patients. Vaccines are critical to keeping residents out of the hospital. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

We also would like to point out the fact that this nursing home received a first-rate grade of A- in our short-term care area. In the area of short-term care, we try to qualify indicators of a facility's rehabilitation. We analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final statistic we assessed in this area is the number of residents that who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. We found that 5.8 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

Switching gears to our next area, this facility received a strong nursing score. We gave it a B+ in that area, topping off one of our more impressive profiles. When calculating our nursing scores, we analyze both the number of hours nurses spend with residents and the levels of licensure of those nurses. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by having a policy of moving a resident even once per day.