Divine Providence Community Home

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing these inspection scores. One of those factors is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being quite insignificant. Although this nursing home had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were major deficiencies based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Contributing to its high-end profile, this facility also excelled in our long-term care area. In fact, we awarded it a score of A for that area. Nursing homes that excel in long-term care tend to be well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to patients. Once we looked at the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients healthy. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

To complement its strong performance in other areas, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. Nursing scores are mostly associated with the facility's nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The last area we assessed is short-term care, where this nursing home received a grade of B+. This completed an elite profile. Few facilities earned a B+ or better in each of our categories. In determining these short-term care grades, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our objective is to devise a barometer for sizing up the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.