Tri-County Nursing Home

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this facility also earned an A+ inspection score. This is based on the facility's recent government inspections. An A+ in this area is one of the highest complements we can pay to a facility. Inspection scores account for a host of factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher scores in this category usually have few severe deficiencies. This place received 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered to be major deficiencies. This indicates that the government inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies to cause an immediate risk to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

In addition, this nursing home was given high marks in the category of long-term care. Consequently, it received one of our best grades in that category with a grade of A+. Nursing homes that do well in this category typically are well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to residents. One of the datapoints we considered after nursing hours was vaccinations. This nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. This is a great way to minimize unnecessary deaths for the nursing home population. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

The next area we looked at is short-term care. Adding to its elite resume, this facility also excelled in that area. In fact, it received a of A for that area. Our short-term care grades are arguably more important for those needing rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation generally utilizes additional highly-skilled nursing. This includes not just nursing, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final statistic we assessed in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that 5.8 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

Moving on to the final category, this nursing home was awarded a highly favorable nursing grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of A- in this area, rounding out a straight A profile. When computing our nursing scores, we look at both nursing hours and the levels of licensure of the nurses. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at certain nursing quality measures in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We view these areas as good indicators of the quality of nursing care provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.