Kauai Veterans Memorial Hospital

We also would like to emphasize that this facility excelled in our nursing category. We awarded them an A+ in this category. We weighed the licensure of nurses at the nursing home, as well as the number of hours the nurses worked with patients, in calculating our score in this category. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed very well when it comes to avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

This nursing home also received an A+ for its long-term care score. Facilities that receive this kind of score in this category typically provide consistent 24/7 care to ensure patients are kept in good health. One of the criteria we considered on top of nursing hours is vaccinations. This nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. Vaccination is a proven method to minimize unnecessary deaths for the senior population. Clearly, this facility 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 one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This facility also was awarded a dominant short-term care score. Indeed, this is this nursing home's third best category score. In that category, we awarded this facility a score of A-. Our short-term care ratings are based in part on the nursing home's quantity of skilled highly skilled professionals. This includes a wide spectrum of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, in addition to other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final datapoint we looked at in this category is the number of patients who returned home from the nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

Finally, we also gave this facility a score of B for our inspections category. This nursing home didn't have any real weaknesses. Inspection ratings are based on many data points found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that score well in this category have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes 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 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.