Miller's Merry Manor

In addition to being a great overall grade, this facility also received A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in calculating these inspection grades. One critical factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some end up being quite minor. While this nursing home had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that CMS didn't 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.

This nursing home also was given a very strong long-term care grade. Indeed, this is this facility's second strongest category score. In that area, this facility received a grade of A-. 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. One of the criteria we considered after nursing hours was vaccinations. This facility provided the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccination is a great way to avoid negative health outcomes for the elderly population. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Turning to an additional strength for this nursing home, we gave them one of our more favorable scores in our short-term care category as well, with a B. Our short-term care ratings are vital for people needing rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually mandates additional highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means a vast scope of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last measure we considered in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

The next category we scored is nursing. We awarded this facility one of our more favorable scores in that area, with a B. Even though this is not on par with many of this facility's other grades, it is nevertheless a positive grade. We weighed the licensure of nurses working for the nursing home, as well as the quantity of hours the nurses were with residents, in computing our score in this category. This facility provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.