Millcroft Living

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility excelled in our nursing rating. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. Our nursing grade assesses the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We look at both the levels of training of those nurses and the amount of time spent with residents. This nursing home averages 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures 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 nursing home the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by having a protocol of moving a patient at least once a day.

To add to its dominant achievements in other areas, we awarded this facility a score of A- for its short-term care grade. In determining our short-term care ratings, we size up the nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other licensed professionals. This grade is often a solid assessment of a nursing home's ability to rehabilitate patients. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final statistic we looked at in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that 4.8 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

Turning to our next area, this nursing home also earned a score of B+ for its long-term care rating. This is a well above average grade in this category. Long-term care scores of this caliber generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. On top of looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents. Vaccines are critical to keeping patients healthy. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Completing its excellent profile, this nursing home also performed well in the area of inspections. We gave it a B+ for that category. Arguably the most critical factor we consider in computing our inspection grades is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a facility's inspection reports. Places with higher scores in this category most likely avoided 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. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.