St Therese Tcu North

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it received an A+ short-term care grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. Our short-term care grades are vital for prospective residents seeking rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally requires more skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes a wide spectrum of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. We were pleased to find that this nursing home employs both registered nurses and physical therapists. The same can't be said for all nursing homes. The last item we considered in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return home. We found that 7.1 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

We also awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for its nursing grade. Nursing ratings are largely associated with a nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place Minnesota in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of moving residents at least once a day.

We also want to emphasize the fact that this facility was awarded an elite grade of A in our long-term care category. For prospective residents looking for a permanent residence as opposed to rehabilitation, long-term care is an important category. One of the criteria we considered on top of nurse's aid hours was vaccinations. Unfortunately, it does not look like this nursing home provided information about vaccinations. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Finally, this facility has received near flawless inspections in recent years. We awarded them an impressive grade of A in this category. This is one of the few facilities in the country to receive an A- or better in all four categories. Inspection scores are tied to many pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that receive favorable grades in this category tend to have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. This facility was hit with 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be major deficiencies. This tells you that the inspectors didn't consider any of these deficiencies to be an imminent risk to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.