Sharon Towers

We also wanted to point out the fact that this facility earned near flawless government inspections in recent years. We awarded them an A+ in this category. Arguably the most critical factor we look at in calculating our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Places with better scores in this category typically avoided the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the inspectors didn't consider 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.

In addition, this facility received high marks in the area of nursing. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A+. Nursing ratings are largely associated with a nursing home's nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 1.2 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility 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 often be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Another strength for this nursing home was short-term care, where it was awarded an A+ grade. This is just about as good as it gets in this area. In the category of short-term care, we strive to assess measures of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. We assess the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses and various therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final datapoint we looked at in this area is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that 5.6 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

The final category we assessed was long-term care. We awarded it another impressive grade of A+ in this area. This finalized a spectacular profile of all A+'s. Long-term care scores in this range generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. Once we finished looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses, we turned to the facility's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is very impressive. Pneumonia is often a life or death health condition for nursing home patients so we strongly prefer when a nursing home doesn't take any chances. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping 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.