The Vineyards at Concord

In addition to being a strong facility overall, this facility really excelled in the area of inspections, where it received an A+. Few nursing homes performed better in this category. Inspection ratings weigh several factors, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these factors by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This place received 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This indicates that CMS didn't deem any of these deficiencies to create an immediate threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also was given a favorable long-term care grade. In fact, we gave it an above average score of B in this area. In a long-term care environment, the nursing home's primary objective is to maintain patients' quality of life and keep them safe. One of the datapoints we considered after nursing hours is vaccines. This facility administered the pneumonia vaccine to 90 percent of its patients. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This facility received a very good nursing grade this year as well. It received one of our better scores in that category with a grade of B. We looked at the levels of nurses at the facility, as well as the quantity of hours those nurses spent with patients, in computing our rating in this category. This facility provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well in the area of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The final category we looked at is short-term care. We awarded this nursing home a grade of B- in that area. In computing our short-term care scores, we size up the nursing home's levels of skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. This rating is more often than not a reliable measure of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. 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 patients returned home. At most facilities, closer to half of their patients are able to return home so this figure is below average.