Little Sisters of the Poor

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for its nursing grade. In calculating our nursing grades, we analyze both nursing hours and the levels of licensure of the nurses. This particular nursing home provided 4.7 hours of nursing care per resident per day, which was among the highest totals we found. Lastly, this facility also excelled in the quality measures we looked at. It performed as well as any facility the state in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers.

In addition, this nursing home earned top notch health inspections in recent years. We awarded them one of our better scores in that category, with a grade of A-. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating these inspection scores. One of those factors is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some are quite insignificant. This nursing home was assessed 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This tells you that the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies an immediate threat to patient safety or health. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

This nursing home is also strong in the area of short-term care, where it was awarded a score of B. It outperformed most nursing homes in this category. Our short-term care grades are critical for people seeking rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally utilizes additional skilled nursing. This means a vast scope of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

The last area we assessed is long-term care. We awarded this facility a decent score in this category, with a B-. Even though this isn't as high as some of its other grades, it is still not a major area of concern. Long-term care grades are commonly used to assess a facility's performance as a traditional nursing home, as opposed to focusing on the skilled nursing services provided by a rehabilitation facility. After assessing the above average volume of nursing care provided by this facility, we next considered the facility's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is higher than the majority of nursing homes. This combination proved to be effective as this facility keeps its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.