Benedictine Health Center

While this nursing home's overall grade was decent, it really excelled in nursing. In fact, we gave it an A for that category, which is one of our highest scores. Nursing ratings are tied to nurse staffing levels. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed very well in the area of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Turning to the area of short-term care, we gave this facility a grade of A- in that category. In determining our short-term care ratings, we size up a facility's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other highly skilled individuals. This score is considered to be a useful measure of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the percentage of residents who ultimately were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 5.4 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

We also gave this nursing home a middle of the road score in the category of long-term care, where we awarded it a grade of B-. In a long-term care setting, the nursing home's primary objective is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. Once we assessed the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 95.22059 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is better than the vast majority of nursing homes. This facility also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Moving on our last category of inspections, we gave this nursing home a grade of just D. This turned out to be this nursing home's worst grade and it really hurt its overall grade. Our inspection score is based on the nursing home's government inspection reports. Since the data is collected by government inspectors, we weight it heavily in our assessment. Inspection ratings weigh a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. This nursing home was hit with 4 deficiencies by government inspectors. The only positive thing we can say is that none of its deficiencies were in the categories that indicate they created a threat to patient health or safety. Lastly, we also want to point out that this facility received large government fines recently totaling over $100,000. This often suggests that a facility's poor track record has been an issue for several years.