The Episcopal Church Home

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it received a very impressive short-term care grade. In fact, this turned out to be its best category. In that category, we gave this nursing home an A. Short-term care scores are vital for people needing rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically utilizes additional highly-skilled nursing. This means a wide range of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final datapoint we looked at in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that 5.5 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.

This facility also was strong in the area of long-term care, where we awarded it a score of A. Not many facilities performed better in this category. Nursing homes that receive this kind of score in long-term care tend to provide consistent 24/7 care to make sure patients are kept in good health. Once we finished looking at the quantity of nursing care, we turned to the facility's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia sadly can be a life threatening illness for nursing home residents so we prefer when a nursing home does not roll the dice on this issue. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Racking up another strong category grade, this nursing home also excelled in inspections, where it earned a grade of A. Inspection ratings account for a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One key criteria we consider is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better grades in this area tend to have very few severe deficiencies. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that the inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

In the last area, we awarded this nursing home an A for its nursing rating. This rounded out an elite profile. In computing a nursing home's nursing grade, we look at the amount of time nurses spend with residents as well as the skill levels of those nurses. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed 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 facility the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as having a system of moving residents at least once a day.