The Moorings at Lewes

To go along with its strong overall grade, we gave this nursing home an elite grade of A+ for its short-term care score. Our short-term care grades are important for prospective residents in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally requires additional highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means a broad scope of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of patients that who were able to eventually return home from this facility. We found that 6.3 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

This facility also received a nearly flawless inspection. As a result, it received one of our highest scores in that category with an A+. This is one of the few nursing homes to receive multiple A+'s. Inspection grades are tied to items located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that excel in this category have few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also excelled in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of A. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. Nursing scores are heavily correlated with nurse staffing levels. This facility 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 place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can typically be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

In the final category we scored, this facility received a very strong grade of A in our long-term care category. With this grade, the facility completed a straight A profile. Facilities that do well in long-term care typically provide patients with better supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. After assessing the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients healthy. 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 less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.