North Star Manor

In addition to a phenomenal overall grade, this facility also received A+ nursing grade. There are a host of criteria included in this category. Many of these factors reflect the quantity and quality of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics 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 country 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 having a protocol of moving residents more often.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received a top-shelf grade of A in our long-term care category. Long-term care scores in this range generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. On top of assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 98.48485 percent of its patients, which is much higher than most nursing homes. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

In addition, this nursing home also earned excellent government inspections in recent years. We gave it one of our best grades in that category, with an A. Our inspection scores are tied to items located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that receive favorable grades in this area have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. Although this facility had some deficiencies on its inspection report, none of them were severe based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

The final area we looked at was short-term care. We gave this facility one of our better grades in that category, with a B. Although this is not as favorable as several of its other grades, it is nevertheless an excellent grade. With our short-term care grade, we seek to craft a valuable gauge for rehabilitation. In doing so, we assess a facility's levels of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final statistic we considered in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We found that 4.4 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.