St Joseph Residence

One of the reasons this place ended up being a great nursing home is that it earned an A+ inspection grade. This is as good as it gets in this critical category. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in calculating these inspection ratings. One critical factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more important than the number of deficiencies, as some of these are quite minor. This place was hit with 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe. This indicates that CMS didn't consider any of these deficiencies to cause an immediate risk to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Another reason we rated this facility so favorably is that it was given an A+ long-term care score. This is just about as elite as it gets in this category. Facilities that do well in long-term care typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to residents. In addition to looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia is often a life threatening ailment for nursing home patients so we strongly prefer when a facility does not leave its residents vulnerable. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Another reason we rated this nursing home so highly is that it received an A+ nursing grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. Our nursing rating assesses a handful of datapoints, but the main consideration is the level of nurse hours per patient per week. This facility provided 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well when it comes to avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

In the final category we graded, this nursing home was awarded a very favorable grade of A- in our short-term care category. With this grade, the nursing home finished off a straight A profile. Our short-term care scores are likely more meaningful for folks needing rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation usually utilizes higher levels of skilled nursing services. This means not merely nursing services, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last measure we assessed in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that 0 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.