St. Mary's Hospital

On top of faring well overall, this nursing home received high marks in the area of short-term care as well. As a result, it received our highest score in that category with an A+. Short-term care ratings are meaningful for prospective residents in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically requires additional highly-skilled nursing. This includes a broad scope of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 6.7 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

This facility also received an A+ inspection grade, making it one of the few places to receive multiple A+'s in our categories. This grade is based on the facility's recent government inspections. Inspection scores account for several factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher scores in this area usually have few severe deficiencies. Although this place had a few deficiencies on its inspection report, none were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for its nursing grade. There are numerous factors included in this category. Most of the subcategories reflect staffing levels. This nursing home provides 0.8 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed very well in terms of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The fourth area we graded is long-term care, where this nursing home received an A. This completed a very impressive profile. Few facilities earned an A- or higher in in each area we assessed. For long-term care residents, the primary goal is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. Once we looked at the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination record. Unfortunately, we weren't able to locate this facility's vaccination rates. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.