The Lutheran Village at Miller's Grant

One of the reasons this turned out to be a great facility is that it earned a very impressive short-term care score. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A. Our short-term care grades are probably most critical for folks requiring a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates additional skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not only nursing, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. This nursing home employs both physical therapists and registered nurses. Not all facilities employ these skilled professionals. The last item we considered in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received an impressive grade of A in our nursing category. Our nursing rating is mostly associated with the facility's level of nurse staffing. This facility provided 0.7 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can many times be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Adding to this facility's impressive resume, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A for our inspections rating. These inspection grades take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can learn more about each of these issues by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. We were not able to find deficiency data for this nursing home. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

In the last category, this nursing home also was given a very strong long-term care score, with an A. This finished off a very favorable report card. Nursing homes that do well in long-term care tend to provide patients with better supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. On top of looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients, which is far higher than the majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.