St Margaret Hall

On top of being a great nursing home overall, it also earned A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections are nearly flawless. Inspection scores are tied to many datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that score well in this category tend to have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these places should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. Amazingly, this was one of the few nursing homes in the country that had no deficiencies whatsoever on its inspection report. This is very impressive. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Contributing to its first-rate profile, this facility also received a superb long-term care grade, with a score of A. Long-term care ratings in this range generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. In addition to looking at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients, which is much higher than most nursing homes. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

We also wanted to alert you to the fact that this facility was given a first-rate score of A in our short-term care category. Our short-term care ratings are based on a nursing home's quantity of highly-skilled nursing services. This includes a vast range of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 6.7 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

In the last category we analyzed, this nursing home was awarded a very strong grade of A in our nursing category. With this score, the facility finished off a straight A profile. Our nursing grade considers a host of factors. The most heavily weighted variable is the quantity of hours nurses spent with residents. This facility provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can typically be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.