St Aloisius Medical Center Nursing Home

One of the reasons this place turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. These inspection ratings weigh several factors, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these factors by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that CMS did not deem 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.

One of the other reasons we graded this facility so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing rating. In fact, nursing proved to be its second best category grade. In that category, we awarded this facility a grade of A. In calculating our nursing ratings, we factor in both the number of hours nurses spend with residents and the skill levels of those nurses. This facility provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This facility also was superb in the category of long-term care, where we gave it a score of A. Few nursing homes fared better in this category. Long-term care scores of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. Once we concluded our assessment of the amount of care provided by nurses, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia sadly can be a dangerous condition for nursing home patients so we strongly prefer when a nursing home doesn't leave this to chance. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

In the final category we graded, this facility received a very strong grade of A- in our short-term care category. With this grade, the nursing home completed a straight A report card. Our short-term care ratings are arguably more important for individuals needing rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation generally requires more skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes not merely nursing services, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility 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 looked at the percentage of residents who ultimately returned home from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home.