Patriot Heights Health Care Center

On top of performing well in its overall grade, this facility performed at an even higher level in the area of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining our inspection grades. One of those factors is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more important than the number of deficiencies, as some of these are relatively minor. While this nursing home had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to this facility's list of strengths, it also was awarded a first-rate long-term care grade. We awarded them a dominant grade of A in this area. Nursing homes that excel in this category typically provide residents with better supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. On top of assessing the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents. Vaccines are critical to keeping patients out of the hospital. The last datapoint we assessed was the facility's hospitalization rate. Here we found that this nursing home had 4.49 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. Although this wasn't as impressive as most of its other scores in this category, this statistic may be skewed for some nursing homes due to some of the medical complexity of patients.

Next, we looked at the nursing category where we awarded this nursing home a grade of B-. This facility didn't perform quite as well in this category as it did in some other categories. Nevertheless, this is still a respectable score. Our nursing score considers a host of subcategories. The most important factor is the number of hours nurses spend with patients. This nursing home provides 3.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing ratings also weigh quality-based metrics, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed better than average in this area. This is typically a reliable indicator of how carefully a facility's nursing staff is tending to its patients. Major falls can typically be avoided if more nurses and better safety protocols are used.

The last area we graded was short-term care. We awarded this facility a solid grade in this area, with a grade of B-. While this is not on par with many of its other grades, it is still not a poor grade. In our short-term care grade, we try to create a sound measure for rehabilitation services. In doing so, we look at the facility's scope of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. We were extremely impressed to find that this facility offers its residents substantially more physical therapist hours than most other nursing homes. Lastly, we looked at the number of residents that ultimately returned home from this facility. It performed respectably in this metric with 46.6 percent of its patients returning home.