Benedictine Health Center

One of the reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it received a very impressive nursing score. Nursing actually ended up being its best category. In that area, we awarded this nursing home an A. When determining a nursing home's nursing grade, we look at the number of hours nurses are seeing patients as well as the level of skill of those nurses. This particular nursing home provided 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 place the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as employing a protocol of moving residents at least once a day.

Adding to this nursing home's list of achievements, it also was given a very favorable short-term care grade. We awarded them a strong grade of A in this area. Our short-term care grade is generally used to judge a nursing home's rehabilitation services. To offer highly scored rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to have better levels of skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other highly skilled individuals. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last statistic we assessed in this category is the number of residents that eventually returned home from the nursing home. We found that 6.3 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

This facility's third most favorable category turned out to be its long-term care score, where it received a grade of B-. Our long-term care grades are more meaningful for patients needing more traditional services associated with personal care. One of the datapoints we considered on top of nurse's aid hours is vaccines. Fortunately, this nursing home provided the pneumonia vaccination to 95.78544 percent of its patients. This facility was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Lastly, we looked at this nursing home's inspection score This was not one of this nursing home's stronger grades. We gave it a score of C in this area. This isn't a terrible grade in this category. It simply wasn't as strong as some of this place's other category grades. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing our inspection grades. One of those factors is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some of these are quite insignificant. This facility had 4 deficiencies on its government inspection report, but none were in any of the categories labeled G through L. This indicates the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies to present an imminent danger to resident health or safety. Unfortunately, we also need to draw your attention to the fact that this facility received significant government fines in recent years.