Towne House Retirement Community

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is it received an A+ in our inspections category. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. These inspection ratings weigh several factors, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can learn more about each of these factors by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also was given an A+ for its short-term care score. With our short-term care assessment, we try to forge a fair barometer for rehabilitation services. In doing so, we look at the facility's offerings of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. Remarkably, this nursing home provides about 1.5 times as many hours of services from physical therapists and registered nurses than most nursing homes we looked at. The final statistic we looked at in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We found that it fared as well as just about any facility in Indiana in this area with 63.7 percent of its residents returning home.

We also want to draw your attention to the fact that this nursing home received an elite score of A- in our long-term care category. For prospective residents in need of a permanent residence as opposed to rehabilitation, long-term care grades are an important measure. Once we assessed the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination records. We were not able to track down this facility's vaccination rates. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Turning to our last category, this nursing home also performed admirably in the nursing category. We awarded it a B+ for that category. This finalized a very strong profile. When computing our nursing scores, we assess both the number of hours nurses spend with residents and the skill levels of the nurses. This nursing home provided 3.7 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis. At least one fourth of this care was provided by registered nurses, which are skilled nurses. This is a high percentage of skilled nursing care. In computing our nursing ratings, we apply more weight to care provided by more highly trained nurses such as registered or licensed 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 frequently be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.