Royal Health Forest Farm – Middletown

In addition to performing well in its overall grade, this facility received an excellent long-term care grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of A in that category. Facilities that receive this type of score in this category typically provide consistent 24/7 care to ensure residents are kept in good health. On top of considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 87.96296 percent of its patients. This is a few points below what we were hoping for but still a decent figure. While its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we hoped for, we were pleased to find place was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Contributing to its dominant profile, this facility also performed well in our short-term care category. In fact, we gave it a grade of A for that area. Our short-term care ratings are arguably more important for patients in need of a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally utilizes additional skilled nursing. This includes not just nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we considered the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 5.9 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

This facility has had near flawless government inspections in recent years. We awarded them an A- in this area. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing these inspection ratings. One critical factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies can be relatively insignificant. This facility was assessed 7 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This tells you that CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies to cause an imminent threat to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

In the last category, we awarded this nursing home an A- for its nursing rating. This completed a very strong report card. In calculating our nursing grades, we assess both staffing levels and the skill levels of the nurses. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at certain nursing quality measures in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We view these statistics as good indicators of the caliber of nursing care offered, since better care tends to reduce these problems.