The Barrington of Carmel

We also wanted to emphasize that this facility has received near flawless health inspections in recent years. We gave them an impressive grade of A+ in this area. Inspection scores account for a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One key criteria we weigh heavily is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher grades in this category usually have very few severe deficiencies. Although this facility had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were serious based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This top-shelf facility also performed remarkably in the category of short-term care, where we gave it a score of A+. Only a small group of nursing homes fared better in this category. In calculating these short-term care ratings, we quantify the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The goal is to devise a scale for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 6.5 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

To complement its strong performance in other areas, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. When computing our nursing grades, we analyze both staffing levels and the levels of licensure of those nurses. This particular nursing home provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility Indiana in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by having a protocol of moving a resident more frequently.

Switching gears to the final area, this facility received an excellent long-term care grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of A in this area, rounding out a straight A profile. Long-term care scores in this range generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. After looking at the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is far higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. 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 only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.