Signature Healthcare Center of Waterford

In addition to receiving a strong overall rating, this facility excelled in our inspections category, which is based on the facility's inspection reports. We gave it a grade of A for that category. Inspection scores are tied to datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that score well in this area have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. This nursing home was hit with 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe deficiencies. This tells you that the government inspectors did not consider any of these deficiencies to create an immediate risk to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also fared very well in the category of long-term care, where we awarded it a score of A-. Very few nursing homes performed better in this area. For patients seeking a permanent place to live rather than skilled nursing, long-term care is an important category. After looking at the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 93.77162 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which happens to be somewhat below what we were hoping for but still a respectable percentage. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Turning to our third category, this nursing home also received a score of B+ for its short-term care rating. This is a well above average grade in this area. With our short-term care category, we try to forge a valuable measure for rehabilitation. In this process, we assess the facility's level of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the number of residents that ultimately returned home from this nursing home. We found that 4.5 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.

Turning to the next category, this nursing home received a strong nursing grade. Even though this wasn't nearly as impressive as some of its other scores, this is still one of the stronger scores we offer. Our nursing rating features a number of subcategories. The most heavily weighted variable is the number of hours nurses spent with patients. This nursing home averages 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 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.