The Villa at the Bay

With an address in Petoskey, Michigan, The Villa at the Bay is the sole facility we were able to find in this city. With an overall grade of B, this nursing home is a fine option. At the end of the day, this facility looks like a solid choice for most people. The best part of this facility's strong report card is its nursing score. We discuss nursing in the next section

On top of receiving a strong overall grade, this facility performed well in our nursing category. In fact, we awarded it an A for that category, which is one of our highest scores. Nursing grades are based largely on nurse staffing levels. This nursing home offers 3.3 hours of nursing care per patient per day, of which more than one hour of those were provided by registered nurses. This is one of the most highly trained nurses. In calculating our nursing ratings, we add more weight to hours performed by registered nurses. 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 facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can typically be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

In addition, this facility also excelled in the area of inspections, where it received a grade of A-. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. Perhaps the most significant factor we consider in calculating our inspection grades is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities with better grades in this area most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. Although this place had some deficiencies on its inspection report, none of them were major deficiencies based on CMS' scale. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe made us feel better about this inspection report.

This facility truly excelled in the category of short-term care, where we awarded it a score of A-. Only a select group of nursing homes performed better in this area. In computing our short-term care grades, we assess the facility's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other types of therapists. This grade is generally a meaningful assessment of a facility's rehabilitation services. When we assessed this facility's nursing hours, we found it offered more care from registered nurses than most nursing homes. Finally, we considered the number of residents who ultimately returned home from this nursing home. It fared better than most facilities in this area with 49.9 percent of its patients returning home.

This facility's least impressive area was long-term care, which is the final category we assessed. Sadly, it received an F for this category. In spite of several favorable scores in other areas, this score is still somewhat alarming so we would like to to make a note of it. In a long-term care setting, the facility's primary objective is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. Once we assessed the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 99.69419 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is higher than the average nursing home. Surprisingly, this place also fared well at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had just 1.11 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. Sadly, a few of its other scores in this category were not as favorable as these.