Twin Fountains Home

On top of being a strong facility overall, it also earned A+ inspections in recent years. Its inspections are virtually perfect. Inspection scores are tied to pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that score well in this area tend to have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these places generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

One of the other reasons we graded this nursing home so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility an A-. Our nursing score includes a number of datapoints. The most heavily weighted one is the quantity of hours nurses spent with patients. This facility provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place 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 generally be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This nursing home also was awarded a impressive short-term care grade. This actually ended up being its third best category score. In that area, this facility received a score of A-. In computing our short-term care ratings, we scrutinize a facility's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other highly trained professionals. This grade is typically a meaningful measure of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 5.3 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

The next area we graded was this facility's weakest category. However, even its lowest point would be a highlight for many facilities. We awarded it a strong grade of B for our long-term care category. Long-term care grades of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. Once we looked at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 86.36364 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is somewhat less than we were hoping for but still a respectable percentage. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.