The Green Home

In addition to performing well in its overall grade, this facility received an excellent nursing grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of A in that category. The nursing rating analyzes a handful of subcategories, most of which are based on levels of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as employing a system of moving residents at least once a day.

Adding to its impressive category grades, this nursing home excelled in the category of inspections, where it earned a grade of A. Few nursing homes performed as well in this area. Perhaps the most important factor we look at in calculating our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Facilities with better scores in this category most likely dodged the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. Fortunately, although this place had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G through L. This means that CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. We should point out that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in this industry.

This nursing home also excelled in the category of short-term care, where it received a grade of A-. Few nursing homes received a better grade in this area. In computing our short-term care ratings, we look at the nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other types of therapists. This category is often a useful assessment of a nursing home's rehabilitation. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the number of patients who ultimately returned home from this nursing home. We found that 5.1 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

Moving on to the next area, this facility received a highly favorable long-term care score. Although this was not nearly as impressive as some of its other category grades, this is still one of our better scores we offer. When facilities receive this kind of grade in long-term care it is typically a good sign for resident care and suggests that the facility is well-staffed with nurses aids. After looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 95.27897 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Vaccines are critical to keeping patients out of the hospital. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.