Caritas Center

In addition to performing well overall, this facility also earned a nearly flawless inspection report. As a result, it received one of our best grades in that area with a grade of A+. Our inspection ratings weigh a host of factors included in a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with better grades in this area typically have few of these severe deficiencies. While this facility had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also was awarded an A+ long-term care grade, rendering it one of the few nursing homes to receive more than one A+ category grades. Facilities that excel in this category typically are well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to residents. One of the criteria we considered after nursing hours was vaccinations. This nursing home provided the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccination is a reliable method to minimize unnecessary deaths and hospitalizations for the elderly population. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This nursing home also received an A+ for its nursing grade. Our nursing score weighs a variety of datapoints. The most heavily weighted one is the amount of time nurses spend with residents. This nursing home provides 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures 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 country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as employing a protocol of moving a patient more frequently.

Moving on to the last area, this nursing home received an excellent short-term care rating. We awarded it an A in this category, giving this facility straight A's. Short-term care grades are typically employed to assess a nursing home's rehabilitation services. In order to provide quality rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally need to provide higher levels of skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other types of therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last measure we looked at in this area is the number of residents who who were able to eventually return home from the facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.