St. Leonard Health Care Center

While we did not rate this place favorably overall, we want to point out its relatively favorable inspections in recent years. We gave it a B in this area, which is much better than its overall score. Perhaps the most critical factor we consider in calculating our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. It is typically in your best interest to avoid places that had a long list of deficiencies. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This means the inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A few minor deficiencies aren't the end of the world.

Another one of this facility's more favorable category scores was in the category of short-term care. In that area, we gave this nursing home a grade of B. It actually outpaced most nursing homes in this area. In calculating our short-term care grades, we assess a facility's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other highly skilled individuals. This grade is considered to be a useful measure of a facility's ability to rehabilitate patients. We weren't able to locate registered nurse or physical therapy staffing data for this facility. The last measure we considered in this area is the percentage of patients that who were able to eventually return home from the facility. We found that 5.8 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

This nursing home actually received a decent grade in the area of nursing as well. We awarded it a grade of C for that category, which is not a bad score. When calculating our nursing scores, we assess both staffing levels and the training levels of the nurses. This place averages just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident daily, which is not an impressive total. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics. While this facility got dinged a bit for nursing hours, it excelled in some of these quality metrics. With less than five percent of its residents suffering from pressure ulcers, it performed very well in this area. This can be an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by having a protocol of turning patients at least once a day.

This facility's worst area is long-term care, which is the last category we scored. In this area, we awarded this facility a grade of D. Facilities that don't score well in this category often don't provide as much nursing care and also may be struggling in some of the areas of routine personal care we looked at. After considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 91.71429 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is somewhat lower than we were hoping for but still a reasonably acceptable figure. To our surprise, this facility was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this nursing home has fewer hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes. This was its best feature in this category.