St. Joseph's Villa

St. Joseph's Villa is a small non-profit nursing home located in David City, Nebraska. We gave this facility an overall grade of B+. A grade of this caliber requires favorable marks in most areas. You can certainly do much worse than this nursing home. We also gave this nursing home impressive scores in each of the major categories. More information about these categories can be found below.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility earned near flawless government inspections recently. We gave them an A+ in this area. Inspection grades account for several factors included in a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with better grades in this category typically have few of these severe deficiencies. 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.

We also awarded this facility a score of A- for our long-term care score. Nursing homes that receive this kind of grade in this category tend to provide consistent around the clock care to ensure patients are well cared for. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients out of the hospital. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Adding to its profile, this facility also earned a grade of B for its nursing rating. This is a well above average score in this category. We looked at the qualifications of nurses employed by the facility, in addition to the quantity of hours the nurses were with patients, in computing our grade in this category. This nursing home provides 3.7 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 place Nebraska in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as employing a protocol of turning a patient at least once a day.

The next area we looked at was short-term care. In this area, we gave this facility a very solid grade of B. In crafting our short-term care ratings, we quantify the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our goal is to devise a barometer for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. This nursing home employs both physical therapists and registered nurses. Not all facilities employ these skilled professionals. The last item we considered in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. It fared as well as just about any facility in Nebraska with 57.4 percent of its patients returning home. For most nursing homes, fewer than half of their short-term patients are able to return home.