Porthaven Healthcare Center

This nursing home received a strong overall score as described above, but we especially wanted to emphasize its excellent short-term care score. We awarded them an A in this area. Our short-term care scores are important for prospective residents in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally requires more skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes a wide spectrum of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final item we looked at in this category is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We discovered that 6 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.

One of the other reasons we rated this nursing home so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing rating. In that area, we gave this nursing home a grade of A-. Nursing ratings are largely associated with the facility's nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this facility 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 nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by having a policy of turning patients even once per day.

This facility also performed well in our inspection category, which is based on the nursing home's recent inspection reports. We awarded it a grade of A- for that category, which is one of our best grades. Inspection grades account for several factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One key criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with better grades in this area generally have very few severe deficiencies. Although this place had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. We should note that deficiency-free inspections are uncommon in this industry.

Turning to the final area, we awarded this facility a D in our long-term care category. This is the facility's weakest category score. However, we would not dwell on one poor score. If you are seeking anything other than short-term rehabilitation, you should take a close look at long-term care ratings. After we finished assessing the volume of nursing care, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination statistics. We were optimistic to find that this facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia. To our surprise, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility has less hospitalizations than the average nursing home. Unfortunately, a few of its other scores in this category were not as favorable as these.