Lutheran Home of Southbury

On top of being an elite facility overall, this facility performed well in the area of inspections, where it earned a grade of A+. Few places performed this well in this area. Perhaps the most significant factor we look at in computing our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher scores in this category most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. Unfortunately, we weren't able to track down deficiency data for this facility. We wish we had more data for this facility. Without the deficiency related data, it was difficult to really evaluate this nursing home in the inspections category.

One of the other reasons we rated this facility so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing rating. This proved to be its second best category grade. In that area, we gave this facility an A-. Nursing scores are heavily correlated with quantity of nursing care available. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed very well in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Building on its fine resume, this facility also was awarded an excellent short-term care score, with a grade of A-. In the area of short-term care, we endeavor to assess measures of a nursing home's rehabilitation. We assess a facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical and occupational therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final statistic we considered in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.

The last area we looked at was this facility's weakest category. However, even its worst category would be a highlight for most facilities. In fact, we gave it a strong grade of B for long-term care. If you are looking for anything other than rehabilitation, you should take a close look at each nursing home's long-term care grades. In addition to assessing the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. We were not able to track down information about this nursing home's vaccination rates. Clearly, this place 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.