Quality Life Services - Henry Clay

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. Inspection grades account for several factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher grades in this area typically have few of these severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This tells you the inspectors did not deem 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.

One of the other reasons we graded this facility so highly is that it was awarded a strong long-term care score. Indeed, long-term care turned out to be its second best category score. In that category, we gave this nursing home a score of A-. Facilities that excel in long-term care tend to be well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to patients. Once we finished looking at the amount of nursing care, we turned to the facility's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 95.68966 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia sadly can be a life threatening illness for nursing home patients so we like it when a facility does not leave this to chance. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The third area we looked at is short-term care. This nursing home received an above average short-term care score, with a grade of B in this category. In computing our short-term care ratings, we assess a nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other types of therapists. This grade is more often than not a solid measure of a nursing home's ability to rehabilitate patients. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 5.1 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

The last category we scored was nursing. In this area, we gave this facility a decent grade of B-. This turned out to be this nursing home's least impressive category. The nursing grade weighs quite a few data points, however, the most important one is the level of nurse hours per patient per week. This facility provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient daily. This is a lower figure than we are used to seeing. Lastly, we also factored a few quality-based metrics into our nursing ratings. This facility was relatively weak in two of the major areas we focus on, with below average scores for minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. These areas are often measures of the quality of nursing care offered.