Miller's Merry Manor

With an address in Middletown, Indiana, Miller's Merry Manor is one of just a couple available nursing homes in the city. We awarded this facility an overall grade of B. A grade in this range requires quality scores in most areas. Based on our assessment, this facility looks like a good fit for most people. This facility's impressive report card was highlighted by its inspection score, which is addressed in the next section.

On top of receiving a great overall score, this place also received top notch government inspections in recent years. We awarded them one of our higher scores in this category, with an A+. Perhaps the most critical factor we consider in calculating our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Places with better scores in this area most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

Additionally, this nursing home also was awarded favorable short-term care grades this year. Indeed, we gave them one of our better scores in that area, with a score of B+. In calculating our short-term care grades, we quantify the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The objective is to formulate a scale for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. When we assessed this facility's nursing hours, we found it offered substantially more care from registered nurses than most nursing homes. The last measure we assessed in this category is the percentage of patients who ultimately returned home from the nursing home. It performed better than most nursing homes in this area with 49.6 percent of its patients returning home.

Another strong feature for this facility is that it received an impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of B. Our nursing score is primarily based on the facility's nurse staffing. This facility provides an impressive 3.8 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis. Of this total, more than one quarter of those hours were provided by registered nurses, which is among the most highly trained levels of nurses. We apply more weight to hours provided by skilled nurses in calculating our nursing ratings. Finally, we also assessed certain nursing quality measures in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We look at these datapoints as good indicators of the caliber of nursing care provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.

The last category we rated was long-term care. We awarded this facility a grade of D in the area of long-term care, making this its worst area. Facilities that don't fare well in this category typically are not as well-staffed and are lagging in a few of the areas of routine healthcare services we looked at. After looking at the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 90.99099 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which happens to be somewhat lower than we expected but still a decent percentage. To our surprise, this place was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With just 1.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility has fewer hospitalizations than the average nursing home. This is its best feature in this category.