St Marys Center

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility earned near flawless inspections recently. We awarded them an A+ in this category. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing these inspection scores. One critical factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these end up being quite minor. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This tells you that the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also was given a fine long-term care grade. Indeed, this ended up being its second most impressive category score. In that category, this facility received a score of A-. Facilities that receive this kind of grade in this category tend to provide consistent 24/7 care to make sure residents are kept in good health. One of the factors we considered after nursing hours was vaccines. This facility provided the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. This is a reliable method to minimize unnecessary hospitalizations for the aged 65 and up population. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Turning the page to our third area, we gave this facility a grade of A- for our short-term care rating. This is a very strong rating. Our short-term care ratings are probably more important for people requiring a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally requires more highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not merely nursing, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last metric we considered in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

The final area we scored is nursing, where this nursing home was given an A-. This rounded out an elite profile. Only a select few nursing homes received an A- or higher in each of our categories. The nursing rating assesses quite a few data points, but the main one is the number of nurse hours per patient per week. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at some quality-based measures in this category. This place fared well in some of the quality-based metrics we looked at. By way of illustration, in terms of the percentage of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, this facility performed better than the national average. This is generally an indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided with better nursing care.