The Lutheran Village at Miller's Grant

In addition to faring well overall, this facility also received nearly flawless government inspections. As a result, it earned one of our highest scores in that area with a grade of A+. Our inspection scores account for several factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher scores in this category generally have very few severe deficiencies. Unfortunately, it does not look like we have deficiency data for this facility. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This exemplary nursing home also fared very well in the category of long-term care, where it received a score of A+. Only a small group of facilities fared better in this category. Facilities that do well in long-term care tend to provide residents with more supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. After looking at the significant amount of nursing hours provided by this facility, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is much higher than most nursing homes. This combination proved to be effective as this nursing home keeps its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility excelled in our nursing rating. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. Nursing grades are tied to quality and quantity of nursing care. This nursing home provided 6.1 hours of nursing care per resident per day, which is among the higher totals in the country. A significant percentage of those hours were provided by registered nurses, which are one of the more skilled levels of nurses. We are really impressed by both of these figures. On top of offering impressive levels of nursing care, this place also excelled in several of the quality measures we assessed. With under 5 percent of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the country in this category. This is usually a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls. Many pressure ulcers could be avoided by providing better nursing care and having a system of turning patients more often.

In the last area we analyzed, this facility was given great scores in the area of short-term care as well. As a result, it was given an A+. This made it one of an elite handful of facilities we awarded A+'s in all four categories. In the area of short-term care, we endeavor to evaluate indicators of a facility's rehabilitation services. We analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses and physical therapists. Remarkably, this place provides approximately one and a half times as many hours of services from registered nurses and physical therapists than most nursing homes we looked at. The last statistic we assessed in this category is the percentage of residents who ultimately were able to return home from the facility. We found that it performed as well as just about any facility in Maryland in this area with 59.2 percent of its patients returning home. At most nursing homes, fewer than half of their short-term residents are able to return home.