Benedictine Health Center

We want to draw your attention to the fact that this nursing home received a much better grade for nursing than it received overall. In fact, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A-. Our nursing score is largely tied to the facility's nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by having a policy of turning patients more frequently.

Another one of this facility's more impressive category scores was in the area of short-term care. In that category, we gave this facility a grade of B. Our short-term care grades are presumably most critical for individuals in need of a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates higher levels of highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes not just nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the number of patients who who were able to eventually return home from this facility. We found that 4.1 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

This facility received a solid inspection report this year as well, with few dings from the applicable government inspectors. As a result, it earned one of our better grades in that category with a score of B-. We believe that one of the most critical factors in assessing an inspection report is deficiencies. In this regard, we especially look at the severity of those deficiencies. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G through L. This means that the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor made us feel better about this inspection report.

The next category we analyzed is long-term care. This facility was given a grade of C in the category. In a long-term care setting, the nursing home's primary goal is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. On top of considering the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 93.91635 percent of its patients, which is higher than most nursing homes. Lastly, this nursing home was also able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.