Shepherd of the Valley Poland

To go along with a favorable overall grade, we awarded this nursing home an A+ for inspections. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing these inspection ratings. One critical factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some of these can be relatively insignificant. Fortunately, although this place had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also wanted to alert you to the fact that this facility performed well in our long-term care category. We awarded them a dominant score of A+ in this area. Facilities that receive this kind of grade in this category typically provide consistent around the clock care to ensure residents are kept in good health. After assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents out of the hospital. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Turning the page to our third area, we awarded this facility a score of A for its short-term care score. This is a very impressive grade. Our short-term care grades are believed to be more important for patients in need of rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation typically requires higher levels of skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes not just nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last metric we considered in this area is the percentage of patients who returned home from the facility. We found that 5.8 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

In the last category we looked at, this facility was awarded a very favorable grade of A- in our nursing category. With this grade, the facility topped off a straight A profile. In computing a nursing home's nursing score, we consider the amount of time nurses are seeing residents and the level of licensure of those nurses. 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 facility 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 nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as having a protocol of turning a resident more frequently.