Miller's Merry Manor - Walkerton

In addition to its strong overall score, we awarded this facility an A for our long-term care rating. When nursing homes receive a grade in this range in this category it generally means it has plenty of staff and is a quality place to reside on a permanent basis. On top of assessing the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients. Vaccines are critical to keeping residents out of the hospital. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Adding to its impressive resume, this nursing home also excelled in our nursing category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A for that category. Our nursing grade is mostly associated with the nursing home's nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can many times be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This nursing home also earned excellent government inspections in recent years. We gave it one of our best scores in that area, with a grade of A. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing these inspection ratings. One of those factors is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is usually more important than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies are quite minor. While this facility had a few deficiencies on its report, none were severe based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

The last category we looked at was short-term care, where this facility received a grade of B+. This topped off an elite report card. Few nursing homes earned a B+ or higher in all four categories. Short-term care ratings are critical for people needing rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates additional highly-skilled nursing services. This includes a wide range of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last item we assessed in this area is the percentage of residents that returned home from the facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.