Mary Goss Nursing Home

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this nursing home received an A+ in the area of long-term care. When facilities receive this kind of grade in this category it is typically a good sign for resident care and suggests that the place is well-staffed with nurses and aids. On top of considering the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccines are critical to keeping residents out of the hospital. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.03 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

In addition, this nursing home also performed well in our inspection category, which is based on the facility's recent government inspections. We awarded it an A for that category. Inspection ratings account for a host of factors found on a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher scores in this area typically have few of these 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.

The next highest grade we gave this nursing home came in the category of nursing, where we gave it a grade of B-. This wasn't quite as good as some of its other scores, but a grade in this range is not the end of the world. Our nursing score assesses the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We look at both the levels of training of the nurses as well as the amount of time spent with residents. This nursing home provides only 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient per day. This is a somewhat uninspiring figure which is well below the national average. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this nursing home fared better in some of the quality measures we looked at. In fact, it performed well in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers.

The last area we rated is short-term care, where this nursing home received a grade of C. Although this turned out to be its worst category rating, this is still not the end of the world. Short-term care grades are generally used to grade a facility's rehabilitation services. To offer good rehabilitation services, facilities generally must have higher levels of skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other highly skilled individuals. Unfortunately, we weren't able to track down information about this nursing home's registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. The last metric we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 0 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is actually below average.