Thornton Manor

On top of performing well overall, this nursing home received nearly flawless government inspections. Consequently, it earned one of our best scores in that category with an A+. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing our inspection scores. One critical factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some end up being quite insignificant. Although this facility had a few deficiencies on its report, none of them were severe based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its impressive resume, this nursing home also excelled in our nursing category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A for that category. Nursing scores are largely based on a facility's level of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 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 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 third area we looked at is long-term care. Contributing to its superb resume, this nursing home also excelled in that area. In fact, we awarded it a grade of of A in that area. Nursing homes that excel in long-term care typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to residents. After considering the quantity of nursing care, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is very impressive. Pneumonia tragically can be a dangerous ailment for nursing home residents so we prefer when a facility does not take any chances. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Moving on to the last area, this nursing home also performed admirably in our short-term care category. In fact, we gave it an A- in that area. This completed truly elite report card. In calculating these short-term care grades, we quantify the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The goal is to devise a scale for comparing the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last statistic we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.