Wellbrooke of Carmel

In addition to being a strong nursing home overall, this facility really excelled in our inspections category, where it received a grade of A. Not many nursing homes fared better in that area. Inspection scores are tied to items found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that score well in this category have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. Fortunately, although this nursing home had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the inspectors did not consider 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.

Among this nursing home's other accomplishments is its first-rate long-term care score. We awarded them one of our more favorable grades in that category, with a score of A-. When facilities receive a score in this range in long-term care it generally means it's well-staffed and is an overall good place to reside on a permanent basis. After we finished assessing the quantity of nursing care, we turned to the facility's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia can be a life threatening ailment for nursing home residents so we strongly prefer when a nursing home doesn't leave its residents vulnerable. 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 one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The next category we graded is short-term care. This facility was given a very positive short-term care score, with a grade of B+ in the category. With our short-term care score, we seek to create a fair measure for rehabilitation services. In doing so, we analyze a facility's levels of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we considered the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 6.3 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

Switching gears to the final category, this facility was awarded a respectable nursing grade. Even though this is not quite as strong as several of its other scores, this is still not a major area of concern. When calculating a facility's nursing grade, we look at the number of hours nurses are with residents and the level of skill of the nurses. This nursing home averages just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Finally, nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours, this place actually performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is usually an indicator that a nursing home has quality controls in place. Many falls could be avoided if a nursing home provides enough nurses to assist its residents.