Thomson-Hood Veterans Center

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it earned an A+ in our inspections category. This is as good as it gets in this critical area. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing these inspection ratings. One critical factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these are relatively insignificant. Although this place had some deficiencies on its inspection report, none were major deficiencies based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility excelled in our nursing rating. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. Our nursing rating is primarily associated with a facility's nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can many times be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The third area we assessed is long-term care. Contributing to its superb resume, this facility also excelled in this area. In fact, it received a of A for the area. Nursing homes that do well in this category tend to provide patients with more supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. On top of assessing the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccines are critical to keeping residents out of the hospital. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The fourth category we analyzed was short-term care, where this facility was awarded a grade of A-. This wrapped up an elite report card. Few facilities received an A- or higher in every single category. Short-term care grades are commonly employed to measure a facility's rehabilitation services. To have good rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must offer higher levels of skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other licensed professionals. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home.