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.

This facility also was given an A+ long-term care grade, rendering it one of the few facilities to receive several A+ category scores. Long-term care ratings in this range generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. On top of looking at 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 residents, which is much higher than the majority of nursing homes. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

To complement its strong performance in other areas, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. We scrutinized the levels of nurses working for the facility, as well as the quantity of hours the nurses spent with residents, in computing our grade in this area. This nursing home provides 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 nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The fourth category we scored is short-term care, where this facility was given a grade of A. This topped off a very impressive profile. Not many nursing homes received an A- or higher in in each area we assessed. Our short-term care grade is generally used to judge a nursing home's performance with rehabilitation. To provide highly graded rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to have higher levels of skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other licensed professionals. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last item we looked at in this area is the percentage of residents who who were able to eventually return home from the facility. We found that 5.5 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.