Saint Joseph Care Center

In addition to receiving a great overall score, this nursing home received an A+ inspection score. This grade is based on the facility's recent inspection reports. An A+ in this category is one of the highest complements we can offer a facility. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in calculating our inspection scores. One of those factors is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is usually more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies can be quite minor. Amazingly, this was one of the few nursing homes in the country that had no deficiencies whatsoever on its inspection report. This is very impressive. You can not do much better than a deficiency-free inspection report.

This facility is also strong in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of B+. It outperformed most nursing homes in this category. Our nursing score is primarily tied to the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This facility provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed very well in terms of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The third area we graded is long-term care. This facility received a very positive long-term care grade, with a B in this category. Long-term care scores of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. On top of considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccines are critical to keeping residents out of the hospital. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

The last category we looked at is short-term care. In this category, we gave this nursing home an acceptable grade of B-. This actually turned out to be this nursing home's least impressive area. Our short-term care scores are considered to be more meaningful for patients in need of rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation typically requires more skilled nursing. This includes not just nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we considered the percentage of patients who were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 4.2 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was actually quite a bit below average.