The Stratford House

While we didn't give this place a good overall grade, we did give it a relatively strong grade in the area of inspections, where it earned a B+. Our inspection scores weigh several factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One key criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. You should avoid places with a list of severe deficiencies flagged. Although this place had a few deficiencies on its inspection report, none of them were serious based on CMS' scale. A few minor deficiencies are not the end of the world.

This facility received its second highest category score in the category of short-term care. We gave this nursing home a B- in this category, which is a respectable score. Short-term care ratings are based in part on the nursing home's quantity of skilled nursing services. This means a broad spectrum of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. We were surprised to find that this facility was below average in the two key staffing areas we looked at. In fact, it offered fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. It is still important to determine whether this also correlates to a lower quality of care. Finally, we considered the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most nursing homes, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.

We were stunned to find that this nursing home also excelled in the area of nursing. We gave it an D for that category, which is one of our highest grades. The nursing rating features numerous factors. The most heavily weighted one is the amount of time nurses spend with residents. This nursing home offered just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed well when it comes to minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these datapoints to be reliable measures of the quality of nursing care.

The last area we graded was long-term care, which is a weak spot for this facility. We gave this nursing home a D for the area of long-term care. Nursing homes that don't fare well in this category often don't provide as much nursing care and also may be lagging in a few of the areas of routine healthcare services we assessed. After we finished looking at the quantity of nursing care, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination statistics. Frankly, we were a bit worried that this facility vaccinated a relatively low 67.701866 percent of its patients for pneumonia. To our surprise, this facility was actually decent at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had just 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. This was its best feature in this category.