Stella Maris

On top of performing well in its overall grade, this facility performed at an even higher level in the area of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A-. Inspection ratings are tied to several datapoints found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that score well in this category tend to have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these places generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This means that the government inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A few minor dings are not something to panic about.

One of the other reasons we rated this nursing home so well is that it was given a very impressive short-term care grade. Indeed, short-term care ended up being its second most favorable category grade. In that category, we gave this facility a score of A-. Our short-term care grades are presumably more critical for patients in need of a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally mandates additional highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes not only nursing, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last measure we assessed in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that 5.8 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

Turning to the category of nursing care, this facility didn't perform quite as well in this area as some of the categories discussed above. Nevertheless, a grade of B- in this category is by no means a bad score. We looked at the skill-level of nurses working for the facility, in addition to the quantity of time the nurses were with residents, in computing our rating in this area. This place provides only 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident each day. This is a somewhat discouraging figure which is well below average. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this place fared better in some of the quality measures we looked at. It scored well when it comes to minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls.

The last area we looked at was long-term care. For that category, we awarded this facility a grade of C. In calculating these long-term care ratings, we assess the nursing home's personal care services. On top of considering the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated a relatively low 84.088806 percent of its residents, which is slightly concerning. Nevertheless, this nursing home excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.