South Nassau Communities Hospital T C U

One of the reasons this place ended up being a great nursing home is that it received an A+ in our inspections category. This is just about as good as it gets in this very important area. Inspection grades weigh a host of factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One key criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher scores in this area tend to have very few severe deficiencies. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This high end nursing home also was superb in the area of short-term care, where we awarded it a grade of A+. Very few nursing homes fared better in this category. Our short-term care grade is commonly employed to assess a facility's rehabilitation services. In order to provide quality rehabilitation services, facilities generally must feature better levels of highly skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other licensed professionals. We were pleased to find that this nursing home employs both registered nurses and physical therapists. The same can't be said for all nursing homes. The last datapoint we looked at in this area is the percentage of patients who returned home from the facility. We found that 7.6 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

This facility also was given a impressive long-term care grade. This actually turned out to be its third best category grade. In that category, we gave this facility a grade of A. For prospective patients in need of a permanent place to live rather than rehabilitation, long-term care is an important category. In addition to considering the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. We weren't able to locate information about this nursing home's vaccination rates. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

In our final category, this facility also was awarded an impressive nursing grade, with an A. This finished off a first-rate profile. Our nursing score is mostly tied to the facility's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 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 nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can frequently be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.