Sanctuary at St Mary's

Sanctuary at St Mary's is located in the densely populated metropolitan area of Grand Rapids, Michigan which has a total of 348,860 people. We gave it an overall grade of B-, which is a middle of the road score. Based on our analysis, this nursing home likely wouldn't be a bad choice. Lastly, this nursing home's ownership changed in the last year, so we will need to monitor it to confirm it maintains respectable levels of care.

We want to point out that this nursing home received a far better grade for short-term care than its overall score. In fact, it received one of our highest grades in that category with an A-. In determining our short-term care grades, we look at a nursing home's levels of skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other highly skilled individuals. This score is more often than not a reliable assessment of the facility's ability to rehabilitate patients. Fortunately, this nursing home offers both physical therapists and registered nurses. Not all facilities offer both. The last statistic we assessed in this area is the number of patients that ultimately were able to return home from the facility. This was more of a strength for this nursing home. It fared as well as just about any facility in Michigan in this area with 62.9 percent of its patients returning home.

This facility also excelled in the category of nursing, where it received an B+. Few facilities fared better in this area. Our nursing rating is mostly associated with the nursing home's nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 3.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at a few quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home excelled in these areas, with excellent scores for minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. These areas are generally reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care a facility provides.

This facility also performed well in the category of inspections. In fact, it earned a nearly flawless government inspection report this year. It earned one of our best grades in that category with a grade of B+. Very few nursing homes with an overall score in this range performed this well in multiple categories. Our inspection scores account for several factors included in a facility's inspection report. One key criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better grades in this category typically have very few severe deficiencies. While this nursing home had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This means that the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

This facility's weakest category is long-term care, which is the final area we analyzed. We gave it an F for this category. Even with some respectable scores in other areas, this grade is nevertheless concerning so we wanted to make sure you are aware. Nursing homes that do not fare well in long-term care often do not provide as much nursing care and also may be lagging in some of the areas of routine personal care we looked at. Once we looked at the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination data. We were somewhat surprised to discover that this nursing home vaccinated just 76.72209 percent of its patients against pneumonia. To our surprise, this nursing home actually fared well at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had just 1.69 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. This was its best feature in this category.