The Nichols Center

To pair with a strong overall score, we gave this place an A+ for our inspection category. Arguably the most significant factor we consider in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a facility's inspection reports. Facilities with better grades in this category most likely avoided the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. Unfortunately, we were not able to locate deficiency counts for this nursing home. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Another reason we assessed this facility so favorably is that it received an A+ long-term care score. This is flat out as good as it gets in this category. Nursing homes that excel in long-term care tend to be well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to patients. One of the factors we considered after nurse's aid hours is vaccines. This nursing home provided the pneumonia vaccine to 96.875 percent of its patients. Vaccination is a great way to minimize unnecessary deaths for the nursing home population. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.04 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received an impressive grade of A- in our nursing category. We analyzed the skill-level of nurses at the nursing home, in addition to the quantity of hours the nurses worked with patients, in computing our rating in this area. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at 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 facility the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by having a policy of moving residents even once per day.

Turning to the next area, this nursing home was given a highly favorable short-term care score. We gave it an A- in this area, resulting in this facility receiving straight A's. Our short-term care scores are thought to be more meaningful for those requiring rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation typically requires more skilled nursing. This means not just nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final statistic we looked at in this area is the number of patients that ultimately returned home from the nursing home. We found that 4.8 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.