Penacook Place

The main reason this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it received an elite nursing grade. In fact, we gave this facility a grade of A-. In determining a facility's nursing score, we weigh the amount of time nurses are with residents and the skill levels of the nurses. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can frequently be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Another one of this facility's better category grades came in the category of long-term care. In that area, we awarded this facility a B+. For long-term care residents, the facility's primary objective is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 61.666668 percent of its patients, which is a bit lower than we anticipated. Although its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we had hoped, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The next highest category we gave this facility in any category came in the area of short-term care, where we awarded it a B-. With our short-term care grade, we endeavor to craft a meaningful gauge for rehabilitation. In this process, we assess a nursing home's offerings of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. Unfortunately, this place was below average in terms of its level of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its residents based on the metrics we assessed. The last item we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients that who were able to eventually return home from the facility. We found that just 4.9 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home. This figure was below the national average.

Moving on our last category of inspections, this facility received a grade that's as bad as it gets. Unfortunately, with an F in the inspection category, this facility's overall grade was pulled down significantly. You should pay special attention to any deficiencies on a facility's inspection reports when it receives this bad of an inspection grade. We suggest you pay close attention to the severity of those deficiencies. This nursing home was hit with a deficiency by CMS. Fortunately, it wasn't in a category that suggests that it caused a threat to resident health or safety. Finally, we also need to point out that this place received significant government fines totaling more than $100,000. This generally means that a poor performance has been an issue for multiple years.