Frene Valley of Hermann-a Stonebridge Community

To pair with its relatively modest overall score, we awarded this facility an A+ for our inspections rating. This grade is far better than the facility's overall rating. Inspection grades take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these factors by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. 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.

This nursing home also was awarded a favorable grade in our long-term care category. We awarded this facility an above average grade of B in this area. When facilities receive a score in this range in long-term care it typically means it's well-staffed and is a quality place to reside on a permanent basis. On top of looking at the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 99.55357 percent of its patients, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia sadly can be a dangerous illness for nursing home patients so we like it when a facility does not leave this to chance. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This nursing home's third best area is short-term care. We awarded it a grade of C in this area. This is essentially a middle of the road grade in this category. With our short-term care category, we try to forge a sound gauge for rehabilitation. In doing so, we look at a facility's scope of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. It doesn't look like this nursing home submitted data regarding its registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. The last metric we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients that returned home from the facility. We found that just 4.8 percent of this facility's patients returned home. Unfortunately, this was below the national average.

Turning to the final area, we awarded this nursing home a grade of D for nursing. This is the nursing home's weakest category rating. Sadly, this category hurt the nursing home's overall profile to a certain degree. The nursing grade includes quite a few data points, however, the paramount one is the level of nurse hours per patient per week. This place averaged just 0.2 hours of nursing care per patient per day. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. In addition to receiving below average marks for total nursing hours, this nursing home was a bit less impressive in some of the quality-based measures we looked at in computing our nursing ratings. We looked at the percentage of patients suffering pressure ulcers and found this place was at approximately 150 percent of the national average in this statistic. This is likely a bad sign when you consider that so many pressure ulcers are believed to be preventable with better nursing care. Unfortunately, this statistic dragged down this facility's nursing grade substantially.