Miller's Merry Mano - Fort Wayne

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. Perhaps the most significant factor we look at in computing our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Nursing homes with better scores in this area most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. 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.

Contributing to its strong resume, this facility also was given an excellent long-term care score, with a grade of A-. Long-term care scores of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. After assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 73.52941 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which happens to be a bit less than we were hoping for but still a respectable percentage. Although its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we had hoped, at least this place was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received an impressive grade of A- in our nursing category. Our nursing grade analyzes a handful of factors, but the main one is the level of nurse hours spent with patients. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of turning patients more frequently.

The fourth area we graded was short-term care, where this facility received a grade of A-. This wrapped up a very impressive profile. Only a select few facilities earned an A- or better in every single category. Short-term care grades are commonly employed to gauge a nursing home's performance with rehabilitation. To provide highly graded rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to provide higher levels of highly skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other highly skilled individuals. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last item we assessed in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We found that 5.7 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.