Franciscan Health Care Center

To pair with a strong overall grade, we awarded this facility an A+ for inspections. Our inspection scores are tied to several pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that receive favorable grades in this category typically have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. This place was hit with 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe. This indicates that CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies to cause an immediate threat to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also was dominant in the category of short-term care, where we awarded it a score of A-. Very few facilities received a better grade in this category. Our short-term care grades are based on a facility's quantity of highly-skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This means a vast range of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, in addition to other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 5.6 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

Contributing to its remarkable resume, this nursing home also was awarded an excellent long-term care grade, with a score of A-. Facilities that receive this kind of score in this category tend to provide consistent 24/7 care to ensure patients are kept in good health. After looking at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents out of the hospital. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The last area we scored is nursing. We gave this facility one of our more favorable scores in this category, with a B. Although this isn't as high as a few of its other scores, it is nevertheless a fine score. Our nursing rating assesses the facility's nurse staffing levels. We weigh both the levels of training of those nurses and the amount of time spent with patients. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also assessed certain nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We view these areas as predictive indicators of the caliber of nursing care provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.