The Homestead at Rochester

We also found that this facility excelled at short-term care. We awarded them an elite grade of A+ in this area. In the category of short-term care, we attempt to qualify measures of a facility's rehabilitation services. We analyze a facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last measure we considered in this area is the percentage of patients that ultimately returned home from the facility. We found that 6.2 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

This facility also excelled in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of A. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. When calculating a nursing home's nursing score, we look at the quantity of hours nurses are caring for patients and the level of licensure of the nurses. This facility provided 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 nursing home 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 typically be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

In addition, this facility earned a very good inspection report this year as well. It received one of our higher grades in that category with a grade of B. Arguably the most critical factor we look at in computing our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Facilities with higher scores in this category most likely dodged the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

The last category we scored was long-term care, where this nursing home was given a B-. This actually ended up being this facility's least impressive category. This is nevertheless not a poor grade. In a long-term care setting, the facility's primary objective is to maintain residents' quality of life and keep them safe. On top of looking at the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. This facility was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.