Loretto Motherhouse Infirmary

One of the many reasons this place turned out to be a great nursing home is it received an A+ inspection grade. This is just about as good as it gets in this very important category. Our inspection scores account for a host of factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher grades in this area usually have very few severe deficiencies. 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.

This nursing home also was awarded an A+ long-term care grade, rendering it one of the few nursing homes to be awarded more than one A+ category scores. Facilities that receive this type of score in this category tend to provide consistent around the clock care to make sure residents are kept in good health. On top of looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 98.07693 percent of its residents, which is significantly higher than the majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This first-rate facility also excelled in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of A+. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. Nursing scores are primarily associated with the facility's level of nurse staffing. This facility provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as having a policy of moving residents at least once a day.

In our last category, this facility also received a very strong short-term care grade, with a B+. This rounded out a very favorable profile. Short-term care grades are often employed to score a nursing home's rehabilitation services. To offer quality rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally need to feature higher levels of skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the number of patients that who were able to eventually return home from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.