The Jefferson

On top of receiving a great overall grade, this nursing home also received an A+ in short-term care. In the category of short-term care, we seek to assess measures of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. We look at a facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical and occupational therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final statistic we considered in this area is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that 7 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

In addition, this facility also earned a nearly flawless inspection report. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A. Perhaps the most critical factor we look at in computing our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Places with higher grades in this area typically avoided the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This nursing home received 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe. This means that CMS didn't deem any of these deficiencies an immediate risk to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also was elite in the area of long-term care, where we awarded it a score of A. Very few facilities fared better in this area. In a long-term care environment, the primary objective is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. One of the criteria we considered in addition to nursing hours is vaccines. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like this facility provided data regarding vaccinations. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

In the final category we scored, this facility was given a very favorable grade of A- in our nursing category. With this grade, the nursing home topped off a straight A profile. Our nursing score includes quite a few subcategories, many of which are based on quantities of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics 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 nursing home the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as employing a policy of turning a resident even once per day.