Santa Teresita Manor

In addition to a phenomenal overall grade, this facility also received A+ nursing grade. When calculating a facility's nursing grade, we weigh the amount of time nurses are caring for residents as well as the levels of training of the nurses. This nursing home provides 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed very well when it comes to minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

This nursing home truly excelled in the area of short-term care, where we awarded it a grade of A-. Very few facilities performed more favorably in this area. In computing our short-term care grades, we analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our objective is to devise a scale for comparing the rehabilitation services of various facilities. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

This facility was given its third most favorable category score in the category of long-term care. We awarded this facility a B- in this category, which is a reasonably acceptable grade. In a long-term care environment, the primary goal is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. One of the factors we considered after nursing hours was vaccinations. Fortunately, this facility administered the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. Finally, this facility was also able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Turning to the last category we assessed, this facility earned a good score in inspections as well. We awarded it a B- for that category. We believe that one of the most important factors in assessing an inspection report is deficiencies. In this regard, we especially look at the severity of the deficiencies. While this facility had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A few minor dings aren't something to panic about.