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.

Contributing to its superb profile, this facility also performed well in our long-term care area. In fact, we awarded it a score of A in that category. When facilities receive a grade in this range in this category it generally means it has plenty of staff and is an overall good place to reside on a permanent basis. In addition to assessing the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 97.297295 percent of its residents, which is very impressive. Pneumonia tragically can be a dangerous illness for nursing home patients so we like it when a nursing home doesn't leave this to chance. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

We gave this facility an A for our inspections rating. Inspection scores weigh a host of factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we consider is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher grades in this area tend to have very few of these severe deficiencies. Although this facility had a few deficiencies on its 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.

Switching gears to our next area, this nursing home was given an extremely favorable short-term care score. We gave it a grade of A- in this area, resulting in this facility receiving straight A's. Our short-term care ratings are presumably most important for those in need of rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation usually utilizes more highly-skilled nursing services. This means not only nursing, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last metric we assessed in this area is the number of patients that eventually 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.