Grace of Douglas

On top of performing well in its overall grade, this nursing home earned even higher marks in the area of nursing. In fact, we gave it one of our highest scores in that category with an A. In determining a nursing home's nursing grade, we consider the number of hours nurses spend with patients as well as the level of licensure of the nurses. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can many times be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This facility also excelled in inspections. We gave it an A- for that category. Arguably the most significant factor we look at in calculating our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Places with better grades in this area most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. While this place had a few minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. We should point out that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in the industry.

In addition, this facility also was given favorable short-term care scores this year. Indeed, we gave them one of our better grades in that category, with a score of B. Short-term care ratings are based on a nursing home's quantity of skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This includes a wide range of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, in addition to other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the percentage of patients that ultimately were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

Moving on to our final category, this facility really did not fare very well. Due to a rock bottom grade of F in this category, this was obviously this nursing home's weakest grade. Long-term care grades of this caliber generally are a bad sign for the quantity and quality of care provided by nurses and aids. Once we finished looking at the quantity of nursing care, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 92 percent of its patients for pneumonia. Surprisingly, this place was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility had less hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes. This was its best score in this category.