Shepherd of the Valley-Boardman

On top of earning a strong overall score, this nursing home performed even better in the area of inspections which is based on the nursing home's recent inspection reports. We gave it an A+ for that area, which is one of our best grades. Inspection grades account for a host of factors found on a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher grades in this area usually have few severe deficiencies. While this facility had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were serious based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to this nursing home's list of accomplishments, it also received a superb long-term care grade. We gave them an elite strong of A in this category. When facilities receive a score in this range in long-term care it typically means it's well-staffed and is an overall good place to reside on a permanent basis. Once we finished looking at the volume of care provided by nurses, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia tragically can be a life or death ailment for nursing home residents so we like it when a nursing home does not roll the dice on this issue. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This nursing home's next best category was nursing. We awarded it a grade of B- in this category. While this wasn't quite as good as some of its other category grades, this isn't a bad score either. Our nursing rating looks at the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We weigh both the levels of training of those nurses as well as the number of hours spent with patients. This nursing home provides only 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient daily. This is a somewhat concerning figure as it is well below the national average. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics. Although this nursing home got docked a bit for its nursing hours per resident, it excelled in some of these quality-based measures. With fewer than five percent of its residents experiencing pressure ulcers, it did well in this statistic. This is generally an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as having a policy of moving residents at least once a day.

The final category we analyzed is short-term care, which was this facility's worst area. Unfortunately, we gave it an abysmal F for this category, which is obviously a bit of a disappointment. Our short-term care grades are critical for residents needing rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically utilizes more highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes a wide range of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. It appears that this place was subpar in several staffing areas we assessed. The facility supplied fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than most facilities. The final item we considered in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 4.1 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these poor metrics doomed this nursing home's short-term care score.