Holy Cross Health Center

In addition to performing well overall, this nursing home also received nearly flawless government inspections. Consequently, it earned one of our best grades in that area with an A+. Our inspection ratings account for several factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we look at is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better grades in this area tend to have few of these severe deficiencies. We were not able to locate deficiency data for this facility. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also was awarded an A+ long-term care grade, rendering it one of the few nursing homes to receive multiple A+ category grades. Long-term care ratings of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. One of the criteria we considered after nursing hours is vaccinations. This nursing home provided the pneumonia vaccine to 97.89474 percent of its patients. Vaccination is a great way to avoid negative health outcomes for the elderly population. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This nursing home also received an A+ for its nursing grade. Our nursing grade is mostly associated with a nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This facility provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as having a policy of turning residents more frequently.

Turning to the final area, this nursing home was given a high-end short-term care rating. In fact, we gave it a grade of A in this category, resulting in this facility receiving straight A's. In computing these short-term care scores, we quantify the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our purpose is to create a measure for comparing the rehabilitation services of various facilities. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final item we considered in this category is the percentage of residents who ultimately returned home from the nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.