Bishop Joseph Hodges Continuous Care Center

On top of receiving a great overall score, this facility performed well in our long-term care category. We gave it an A for that category. Nursing homes that receive this kind of score in long-term care tend to provide consistent around the clock care to make sure residents are well cared for. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is much higher than most nursing homes. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This facility also was dominant in the area of short-term care, where we awarded it a score of A. Only a select group of facilities fared better in this area. Short-term care grades are typically used to score a nursing home's performance with rehabilitation. In order to offer quality rehabilitation services, facilities generally must have better levels of skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other highly trained professionals. Unfortunately, it does not appear that this facility provided data regarding its registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. Lastly, we considered the number of patients who returned home from this nursing home. We found that 5.8 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.

This facility has had near flawless inspections in recent years. We gave them an A- in this area. Inspection ratings are based on pieces of information found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that score well in this category tend to have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

The final category we scored was nursing, where this nursing home received a grade of B+. This completed a very favorable report card. Only a select few facilities received a B+ or higher in each of our categories. We analyzed the licensure of nurses employed by the nursing home, as well as the quantity of time those nurses worked with patients, in determining our rating in this area. This particular nursing home provided 0 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some quality-based measures in this category. This facility fared well in some of the quality-based metrics we assessed. For example, in terms of the number of its residents suffering from pressure ulcers, this nursing home performed better than the national average. This is generally an indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Pressure ulcers can frequently be prevented with better nursing care.