St. Elizabeth Florence Skilled Nursing Facility

In addition to a phenomenal overall grade, this facility also received A+ nursing grade. We scrutinized the levels of nurses employed by the facility, as well as the quantity of hours the nurses spent with patients, in computing our grade in this area. This nursing home provides 0.9 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures 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 facility the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as employing a policy of moving a resident at least once a day.

This facility also received a virtually flawless inspection report. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A+. This is one of the few facilities to receive multiple A+'s. Arguably the most important factor we look at in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a facility's inspection reports. Facilities with higher grades in this area typically avoided the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

In the next area we analyzed, this facility was given quality marks in the area of short-term care. Consequently, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a grade of of A+. In our short-term care rating, we strive to craft a sound barometer for rehabilitation. In doing so, we look at the facility's offerings of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we considered the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 6.9 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

In the final category we analyzed, this facility was awarded a very favorable grade of A in our long-term care category. With this grade, the nursing home topped off a straight A report card. In a long-term care environment, the facility's primary objective is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. On top of looking at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. Unfortunately, we were not able to locate this place's vaccination data. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.