Renaissance Care Center

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it received an A+ nursing grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. When computing a facility's nursing grade, we consider the number of hours nurses spend with residents as well as the levels of training of the nurses. This particular nursing home provided 0.7 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can typically be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This nursing home also received an A+ for its short-term care grade. With our short-term care rating, we try to forge a fair measure for rehabilitation services. In doing so, we analyze the facility's offerings of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. 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 this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 5.7 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

Racking up yet another strong category grade, this nursing home also excelled in the area of inspections, where it earned a grade of A. Few nursing homes fared better in this category. Inspection ratings account for a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better grades in this area generally have very few severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that the inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

The last category we analyzed is nursing, turned out to be this facility's weakest category. We awarded this nursing home a grade of D in that category. This really was one of the few weak points on an otherwise strong report card. Our long-term care grade is often used to assess a facility's performance as a traditional nursing home, as opposed to focusing more on the skilled nursing services offered by a skilled nursing facility. After we finished assessing the volume of care provided by nurses, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination records. We were pleased to learn that this nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Surprisingly, this facility was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had just 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. Unfortunately, some of its other scores in this category weren't as favorable as these.