Hilo Medical Center

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this nursing home excelled in our nursing category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A for that category. Our nursing grade assesses the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We weigh both the levels of training of those nurses as well as the quantity of hours spent with residents. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed 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 place Hawaii in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by having a protocol of turning residents at least once a day.

On the list of its many dominant scores, this facility was awarded first-rate long-term care grade. In fact, it received a score of A in this category. Nursing homes that excel in this category tend to provide residents with closer supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. One of the datapoints we considered after nursing hours is vaccinations. This facility administered the pneumonia vaccine to 99.354836 percent of its residents. Vaccination is a great way to minimize negative health outcomes for the aged 65 and up population. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

In addition, this facility also received a nearly flawless inspection report. It received one of our highest grades in that category with an A. Inspection grades are tied to datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that receive favorable grades in this area have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these places should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report, which is still very impressive. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Turning to our next category, this nursing home received an extremely favorable short-term care grade. We awarded it a grade of B+ in that category, topping off one of our finer report cards. In the category of short-term care, we endeavor to assess measures of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. We look at a facility's skilled nursing services, including the ones performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last datapoint we considered in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home.