The Nicol Home

We want to note that this nursing home earned a much better grade for long-term care than it did overall. we gave it one of our highest scores in that category with an A-. Nursing homes that receive this kind of grade in this category tend to provide consistent 24/7 care to ensure patients are well cared for. On top of considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 54.62963 percent of its patients, which is a bit less than we anticipated. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This facility also received favorable health inspections in recent years. We awarded them one of our better scores in that category, with a B. This is better than the facility's overall grade. Inspection scores weigh several factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we look at is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better grades in this area typically have few of these severe deficiencies. This nursing home was hit with 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This indicates that the inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies an immediate risk to resident health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is always a good sign.

Another strength of this facility is its favorable grade in nursing. We gave them one of our better scores in that area, with an impressive grade of D. In determining our nursing ratings, we factor in both nursing hours and the skill levels of the nurses. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in computing our nursing grades. This facility performed well in the area of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these statistics to be good measures of the quality of nursing care.

The last category we looked at is short-term care, which ended up being this nursing home's least impressive category. We gave this facility a grade of D in that category. Short-term care scores are based on the facility's quantity of highly-skilled highly skilled professionals. This means a vast spectrum of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, in addition to other variations of therapy. Given its weak rating in this category, we were not shocked to learn this nursing home offered far fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than most facilities. Lastly, we assessed the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. This wasn't a strength for this nursing home. We found that just 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home. At most nursing homes, about half of their residents are able to return home so this is well below average.