Memorial Heights Nursing Center

This facility really excelled in the area of long-term care, where it earned an A. Few facilities fared better in this category. If it wasn't for this grade, this place's overall grade would have been lower. Long-term care ratings of this caliber generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. After considering the amount of nursing care, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia tragically can be a dangerous illness for nursing home residents so we prefer when a nursing home does not roll the dice on this issue. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Inspections is another category where this facility excelled. We gave this nursing home an A- for our inspections category. This grade is far more impressive than the facility's overall grade. Our inspection scores account for a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we consider is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher grades in this area typically have very few severe deficiencies. While this place had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Another strength of this facility is its favorable grade in nursing. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with an D. We weighed the skill-level of nurses at the nursing home, in addition to the number of hours the nurses worked with residents, in computing our score in this area. This facility offered a meager 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in computing our nursing grades. This facility fared well in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers.

Moving on to the final area, this nursing home really didn't perform very well. Due to an abysmal grade of F in short-term care, this was this facility's weakest category. Short-term care grades are often used to judge a facility's rehabilitation services. To have highly scored rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to provide higher levels of highly skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other licensed professionals. In this nursing home's case, it looks like it provided less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than the typical facility. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. This definitely wasn't a strength for this facility. We found that just 3.7 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most nursing homes, about half of their patients are able to return home so this is well below average.