Sarah A. Todd Memorial Home

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. Inspection scores account for a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we look at is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher scores in this area generally have few of these severe deficiencies. This nursing home received 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered to be major deficiencies. This means that the government inspectors didn't consider any of these deficiencies to pose an immediate threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its dominant profile, this nursing home also excelled in our long-term care area. In fact, we awarded it a score of A for the category. Nursing homes that receive this kind of score in this category typically provide consistent around the clock care to make sure residents are kept in good health. One of the factors we considered on top of nursing hours was vaccinations. This nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccine to 99.4695 percent of its residents. This is a reliable method to minimize unnecessary deaths and hospitalizations for the senior population. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This facility also excelled in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of A. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. Our nursing rating looks at the facility's level of nurse staffing. We weigh both the levels of skill of those nurses and the amount of time spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home 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 often be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by having a system of turning a resident more frequently.

Switching gears to the last category, this facility was awarded a very strong short-term care rating. While this isn't as dominant as a few of its other scores, this is still one of the stronger scores a facility can receive. In the area of short-term care, we try to assess measures of a facility's rehabilitation. We analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses and various therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of residents who returned home from this facility. We found that 4.5 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.