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.

This facility also was given a first-rate short-term care grade. In fact, this ended up being its second strongest category grade. In that area, this facility received a grade of A. In calculating these short-term care ratings, we analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our purpose is to devise a scale for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 6.4 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

This nursing home received an impressive long-term care grade as well. We awarded it one of our better scores in that area with a grade of B+. Nursing homes that do well in long-term care typically provide residents with more supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. In addition to considering the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. Vaccines are critical to keeping residents out of the hospital. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

In the last category we looked at, we found that this nursing home earned a solid inspection report this year as well, with few major dings from government inspectors. As a result, it received a decent score in our inspection category with a grade of B. This nursing home really didn't have any major weak links. Inspection ratings weigh several factors, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these items by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. While this facility had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G through L. This tells you the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A couple relatively minor dings are not necessarily something to panic about.