Mount St Mary

One of the many reasons this place turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ in our inspections category. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing these inspection grades. One key factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some of these can be relatively insignificant. Fortunately, although this place had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the government inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its strong assessment, this facility also received a superb short-term care grade, with a score of A. In forming these short-term care grades, we analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our goal is to formulate a tool for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

This facility also excelled in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of A-. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. We analyzed the qualifications of nurses employed by the nursing home, in addition to the quantity of hours those nurses spent with patients, in computing our rating in this category. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by having a policy of turning residents more frequently.

In our last area, this facility also was given an impressive long-term care rating, with an A-. This topped off a very impressive report card. When nursing homes receive a grade in this range in this category it generally means it has plenty of staff and is an overall good place to live on a permanent basis. Once we assessed the amount of nursing care, we turned to the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia is often a life or death condition for nursing home residents so we like it when a facility does not leave this to chance. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.