The Green Home

In addition to performing well in its overall grade, this facility performed at an even higher level in the area of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A-. Inspection grades weigh several factors, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these items by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A few relatively minor deficiencies aren't the end of the world.

Adding to this nursing home's list of strengths, it also received an excellent nursing grade. We awarded them an impressive grade of A- in this category. Our nursing score is largely associated with the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This facility provided 4.4 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This was one of the more impressive totals we found. In addition, a significant portion of this care was provided by registered nurses, which are highly skilled nurses. On top of offering high levels of care, this nursing home also fared well in several of the quality measures we assessed. For example, in terms of the percentage of its residents suffering from pressure ulcers, this nursing home performed better than the national average. This is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Pressure ulcers can generallY be prevented with better nursing care and a policy of regularly turning residents to prevent bed sores.

We also gave this nursing home a score of A- for our short-term care grade. In computing our short-term care grades, we look at the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our objective is to devise a tool for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different facilities. One reason for this facility's strong score in this category is that it provides more care with registered nurses to its residents than the average nursing home. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of patients who returned to the community from this facility. We found that it outperformed the overwhelming majority of nursing homes in the nation with 56.1 percent of its residents returning home.

The last category we looked at was long-term care. This nursing home was given an impressive long-term care rating this year, with a C. Even though this is not quite as impressive as several of its other category grades, this is still an acceptable grade for that area. Our long-term care scores are based in part on a nursing home's quantity of care. This includes a broad scope of personal care services, ranging from assistance with activities of daily living to routine healthcare services. One of the statistics we considered after this facility's above average nursing hours was vaccines. This nursing home provided the pneumonia vaccine to 94.347824 percent of its residents. This is a proven method to minimize unnecessary deaths and hospitalizations for the aged 65 and up population. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 1.59 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this nursing home had fewer hospitalizations than the average nursing home.