Millcroft Living

This nursing home received a strong overall grade as discussed above, but we especially wanted to emphasize its excellent nursing score. We awarded them an A in this category. The nursing category is based on quite a few datapoints, many of which are based on quantities of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 0.4 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 facility Delaware in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as employing a policy of turning a resident even once per day.

One of the other reasons we rated this facility so well is that it received a dominant short-term care score. In fact, short-term care ended up being its second highest category grade. In that category, we awarded this facility a grade of A-. Our short-term care grades are presumably more important for those requiring rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation usually mandates higher levels of highly-skilled nursing. This means not only nursing, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final datapoint we looked at in this category is the percentage of residents that eventually returned home from the facility. We found that 5.8 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

This nursing home also was awarded a strong long-term care score. In fact, we awarded it an above average grade of B in this area. 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. In addition to looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 98.52216 percent of its residents. Vaccines are critical to keeping residents healthy. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

In the last category we looked at, we found that this facility earned a solid inspection report this year as well. As a result, it earned a decent grade in inspections with a score of B. These inspection scores take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these items by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. 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.