The Gardens

The Gardens is a small nursing home located in Camden, Maine. It looks like this nursing home is one of the highest-graded facilities we assessed. In fact, it was given our most impressive score. We were so impressed with this facility that we ranked it as one of the 25 best nursing homes in Maine. One of the best aspects of this facility's remarkable report card is its short-term care score. We discuss short-term care in the next section.

We also found that this facility excelled in our short-term care rating. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. In the category of short-term care, we seek to evaluate indicators of a nursing home's rehabilitation. We look at a facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. This nursing home excelled at the highest level in the two key staffing areas we assessed. In fact, it provided about 50% more care from physical therapists and registered nurses than the average nursing home. This is typically a great sign. Lastly, we looked at the number of residents who ultimately returned home from this facility. In addition to excelling in the area of physical therapy staffing, we found that it fared as well as just about any nursing home in the nation with 68.1 percent of its patients returning home. Most facilities are below 50 percent in this statistic.

Adding to an already impressive profile, this facility also received virtually flawless health inspections in recent years. As a result, we awarded it an A+ inspection grade. Arguably the most important factor we look at in calculating our inspection grades is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a facility's inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher grades in this area most likely avoided the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. Although this facility had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were serious based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its impressive resume, this nursing home also excelled in our nursing category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A for that category. Our nursing rating consists of a handful of datapoints, many of which are based on quantities of nurse staffing. This facility boasts a really impressive 5.9 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis, of which a significant percentage of those hours were provided by registered nurses. This is one of the most highly highly trained levels of nurses. In addition to offering high levels of care, this place also fared well in several of the quality measures we assessed. For example, in terms of the percentage of its patients sustaining falls leading to major injury, this place outpaced the national average. This is often a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

In our final category, this facility also was given a very strong long-term care score, with a grade of A-. This finished off a rare straight A profile. If you are seeking anything other than rehabilitation, you should take a close look at each nursing home's long-term care scores. Although we determined this nursing home had an impressive volume of nursing care provided by aids and other nursing staff, we found its vaccine statistics to be a bit low. This facility administered the pneumonia vaccine to just 89.32039 percent of its residents. This is one statistic we'd really like to see this nursing home improve on. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.