The Hearthstone

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it received an A+ nursing grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. Our nursing grade consists of many subcategories, most of which are tied to nursing hours. This particular nursing home provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility 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 typically be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Among the reasons we graded this facility so highly is that it received a dominant short-term care grade. Indeed, short-term care turned out to be its second most impressive category score. In that category, we gave this facility a score of A-. In computing these short-term care scores, we analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The purpose is to create a barometer for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various facilities. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 5.1 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

In addition, this nursing home received a very good inspection report this year as well. It received one of our higher grades in that area with a B. These inspection grades take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these issues by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that the inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A couple relatively minor dings aren't necessarily something to panic about.

The next area we assessed is long-term care, in which this nursing home was awarded a B-. This proved to be this facility's least impressive area. This is still not a poor grade. For prospective residents in need of a permanent place to live as opposed to skilled nursing, long-term care is a very important category. In addition to considering the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. Thankfully, this facility provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is a very respectable datapoint. This nursing home keeps its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.