Stella Manor Nursing and Rehabilitation Center

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received an impressive grade of A in our long-term care category. When nursing homes receive a grade in this range in this category it typically means it's well-staffed and is a quality place to live on a permanent basis. In addition to assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia can be a deadly illness for nursing home patients so we strongly prefer when a facility does not take any chances. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Adding to its impressive category grades, this facility also excelled in the category of inspections, where it received a grade of A. Not many nursing homes performed better in this area. Perhaps the most critical factor we consider in computing our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with better scores in this area typically dodged the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. While this facility had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you CMS 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.

Another strong feature for this facility is that it received an impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of B+. Our nursing rating is based on a variety of datapoints. The most important one is the amount of time nurses spend with patients. This particular nursing home provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by having a system of moving a patient at least once a day.

Switching gears to the fourth category, this nursing home received a respectable short-term care rating. Although this isn't quite as strong as many of its other grades, this is still not a major area of concern. Our short-term care grades are considered to be most meaningful for patients needing rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation usually utilizes additional skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes not just nursing, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like this facility provided information on registered nurse or physical therapist staffing. The last item we considered in this area is the number of patients that eventually returned home from the facility. We found that just 4.8 percent of this facility's residents returned home.