The Knolls

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it received an A+ in short-term care. This is simply as good as it gets in this area. In crafting these short-term care ratings, we look at the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our goal is to devise a tool for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various facilities. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final statistic we considered in this area is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that 7 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

Adding to an already impressive profile, this facility also received virtually flawless health inspections in recent years. As a result, we awarded it an A+ inspection grade. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating these inspection scores. One key factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies are relatively minor. This nursing home received 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This indicates that CMS didn't deem any of these deficiencies to be an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its profile, this facility also earned a grade of B+ for its nursing rating. This is a well above average score in this category. When determining a facility's nursing grade, we look at the number of hours nurses spend with patients as well as the levels of training of the nurses. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home 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.

Turning to the fourth area, this nursing home also performed admirably in the long-term care category. We awarded it a B+ in this category. This finalized a very impressive profile. When nursing homes receive this type of score in long-term care it is usually a good sign for resident care and indicates that the place is well-staffed with nurses aids. On top of considering the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 97.4359 percent of its residents, which is significantly higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.