Little Sisters of the Poor Sacred Heart Residence

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it received an A+ long-term care grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. Facilities that excel in this category tend to provide residents with closer supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents, which is significantly higher than most nursing homes. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This nursing home also received an A+ inspection grade, making it one of the rare places to receive multiple A+'s in our categories. This grade is based on the place's recent inspections. An A+ in this category is one of the best complements we can pay to a nursing home. Arguably the most significant factor we look at in calculating our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher grades in this area typically dodged the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. While this place had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This means that CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also received a very impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A. In computing our nursing ratings, we assess both nursing hours and the levels of licensure of the nurses. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed very well when it comes to minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

In the final area, we gave this facility an A+ for our short-term care rating. This finished off a first-rate report card. In crafting our short-term care grades, we analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our objective is to create a measure for comparing the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.