Ave Maria Home

The primary reason this turned out to be a decent nursing home is that it earned an elite inspection score. In fact, its inspection grade was far superior to its overall grade. In the inspections category, we gave it an A+. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing these inspection grades. One key factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these are relatively insignificant. While this place had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This tells you that the inspectors did not 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 nursing home also was given a strong long-term care grade. Indeed, we gave them a B in that area, which is one of our better. Facilities that receive this kind of grade in this category typically provide consistent around the clock care to make sure patients are well cared for. In addition to considering the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients healthy. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Sadly, this facility only received a grade of D for its short-term care rating, which is not a very good score. In the area of short-term care, we try to qualify measures of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. We look at the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical and occupational therapists. In this nursing home's case, we found that it provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. Finally, we looked at the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. This was not a strength for this facility. We found that just 4.7 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most facilities, around half of their residents are able to return home so this is well below average.

The last area we assessed is nursing. We gave this facility a D in the area of nursing, making this the nursing home's worst category grade. The nursing score weighs a variety of factors. The most important one is the number of hours nurses spent with residents. With just 0.2 hours of nursing care per resident each day, this place's nurse staffing levels were significantly below average. On top of receiving below average marks for nursing hours, this place was less impressive in some of the quality-based metrics we looked at in computing our nursing scores. We looked at the percentage of residents suffering pressure ulcers and found that this facility was at roughly 1.5 times the national average in this metric. This is likely a bad sign when you consider that many bed sores are preventable with better nursing care. This statistic really pulled down this nursing home's nursing rating substantially.