Memorial City Health and Rehabilitation Center

On top of receiving a strong overall score, this place also received first-rate government inspections in recent years. We gave it one of our best grades in this category, with an A. Inspection grades weigh several factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One key criteria we look at is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher scores in this area typically have few of these severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G through L. This tells you the government inspectors did not deem 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.

Contributing to this nursing home's list of strengths, it also received a superb long-term care grade. We awarded them a strong grade of A in this category. When facilities receive this kind of grade in long-term care it is usually a good sign for patient care and indicates that the nursing home is well-staffed with nurses aids. In addition to considering the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia is too frequently a dangerous ailment for nursing home patients so we strongly prefer when a facility doesn't leave this to chance. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

The third area we graded is short-term care. This facility was awarded a very positive short-term care grade, with a B in the category. In crafting our short-term care ratings, we look at the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The goal is to create a scale for comparing the rehabilitation services of different facilities. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 4.6 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

The next category we graded was nursing, where this facility was given a grade of B. This facility turned out to be relatively strong in all areas we analyzed. In determining our nursing grades, we weigh both the number of hours nurses spend with residents and the skill levels of those nurses. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed certain nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We view these statistics as predictive indicators of the caliber of nursing care provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.