St Gerard's Community of Care

We also wanted to point out that this nursing home earned near flawless government inspections in recent years. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. Inspection scores are tied to several pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that score well in this area have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these facilities should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. 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.

This nursing home also received a impressive long-term care grade. This actually is its second most impressive category grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A. Facilities that receive this kind of grade in this category tend to provide consistent around the clock care to make sure patients are kept in good health. In addition to considering the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is significantly higher than the majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This facility also received a very strong short-term care score. Indeed, this ended up being its third most impressive category score. In that area, this facility received a score of A-. In crafting these short-term care grades, we assess the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The goal is to formulate a measure for comparing the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final datapoint we looked at in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

In our last category, this nursing home also was given a first-rate nursing rating, with an A-. This wrapped up a first-rate report card. There are a number of data points included in this category. Many of these criteria relate to the quantity of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at some quality-based measures in this category. This place fared well in some of the quality measures we assessed. By way of illustration, in terms of the number of its residents suffering from pressure ulcers, this facility performed better than the national average. This is generally an indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Pressure ulcers can typically be avoided with better nursing care.