Little Sisters of the Poor

In addition to being a first rate nursing home overall, this nursing home also excelled in the area of nursing, where it received an A+. Few nursing homes fared better in this category. Our nursing grade weighs several factors, but the primary consideration is the level of nurse hours per patient per week. This nursing home averages 0.7 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well when it comes to minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

We also awarded this facility a grade of A+ for its long-term care grade. Facilities that excel in long-term care typically provide patients with more supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 95.454544 percent of its patients. Vaccines are critical to keeping patients out of the hospital. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Turning the page to our next area, this facility was given a top-shelf short-term care score. In fact, we awarded it a score of A in this category. In calculating these short-term care ratings, we quantify the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The objective is to create a scale for comparing the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final datapoint we considered in this area is the number of residents that ultimately 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 nursing home on a permanent basis.

Lastly, this nursing home also earned excellent government inspections in recent years. We gave it one of our best scores in the area of inspections, with a score of A-. Few other facilities can boast of receiving an A- or better in every category. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing our inspection ratings. One of those factors is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being relatively minor. 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.