Shirley Chapman Sholom Home East

We also wanted to note that this nursing home excelled in our nursing category. We awarded them an A+ in this category. There are a number of subcategories within this category. Most of these subcategories are tied to staffing levels. This facility boasts a really impressive 4.6 hours of nursing care per resident daily, of which a significant percentage of those hours were provided by registered nurses. This is one of the most highly skilled levels of nurses. This is one of the better totals of nursing hours we were able to find. In addition to offering impressive levels of care, this facility was also above average in several of the major quality-based metrics we assessed in this category. For example, it performed well when it comes to minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. These are generally good measures of the quality of nursing care a facility provides.

This top-shelf facility also excelled in the area of short-term care, where we gave it a grade of A+. Few facilities performed better in this category. Our short-term care grade is generally used to score a facility's rehabilitation services. To offer good rehabilitation services, facilities generally must have higher levels of skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other highly skilled individuals. This nursing home is the gold standard in terms of skilled nursing staffing. The facility supplied roughly 50% more registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than the average nursing home. The last measure we looked at in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We found that it fared as well as just about any facility in Minnesota in this area with 69.5 percent of its patients returning home. At most facilities, fewer than half of their short-stay residents are able to return home.

Tallying another strong category grade, this nursing home also excelled in inspections, where it earned an A. Inspection ratings take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can learn more about each of these issues by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This facility was hit with 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered severe. This means that CMS did not deem any of these deficiencies to cause an imminent threat to patient safety or health. We should point out that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in the industry.

In the final category, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A for its long-term care grade. This topped off a first-rate report card. Long-term care scores of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. In addition to looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 96.74796 percent of its residents, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia sadly is often a life or death condition for nursing home residents so we prefer when a facility does not leave its residents vulnerable. Finally, we looked at the facility's number of hospitalizations. We found that this place had 2.45 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days.