Samuel Mahelona Memorial Hospital

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. In computing our nursing grades, we factor in both nursing hours and the skill levels of those nurses. This nursing home provides 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 nursing home the state 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 having a system of turning residents even once per day.

Turning to our inspection category, this facility excelled in that area, which is based on the facility's inspections. We awarded it an A for that category. Perhaps the most significant factor we consider in determining our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a facility's inspection reports. Places with better grades in this area typically avoided the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. While this nursing home had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were serious based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

The next area we looked at is long-term care. Contributing to its superb resume, this facility also performed well in this category. In fact, it received a grade of of A in the category. Long-term care grades in this range generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. In addition to looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 94.14634 percent of its residents, which is better than most nursing homes. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

In the final area, this nursing home also was awarded a very strong short-term care score, with a B+. This rounded out a very strong report card. Our short-term care scores are based in part on a nursing home's quantity of highly-skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This includes a wide spectrum of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, not to mention other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last item we considered in this category is the number of patients who ultimately returned home from the nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.