We Care Skilled Nursing Facility

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. Arguably the most important factor we consider in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places with better grades in this category most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. 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. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility was awarded impressive grades in the area of long-term care as well. Indeed, it received one of our most elite scores in that area with a score of A-. When facilities receive this kind of score in long-term care it is a good sign for patient care and indicates that the place is well-staffed with nurses and aids. After assessing the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Vaccines are critical to keeping patients out of the hospital. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Another strong feature for this facility is that it received an impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of B. We scrutinized the skill-level of nurses working for the nursing home, in addition to the number of hours those nurses spent with patients, in calculating our rating in this category. This facility provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed very well when it comes to avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The last category we rated is short-term care, where this facility received a B. This nursing home turned out to be strong across the board. Our short-term care scores are thought to be most meaningful for residents requiring a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally utilizes more highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes not just nursing services, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. We weren't able to locate registered nurse or physical therapy staffing data for this facility. The final item we looked at in this category is the percentage of residents that eventually returned home from the facility. We found that 5.6 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.