The Methodist Hospital

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating these inspection scores. One critical factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies can be relatively insignificant. Unfortunately, we were not able to track down deficiency data for this nursing home. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also was given an A+ short-term care grade, rendering it one of the few facilities to be awarded several A+ category scores. In the area of short-term care, we strive to assess indicators of a nursing home's rehabilitation. We analyze a nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical therapists. We were pleased to find that this nursing home employs both registered nurses and physical therapists. The same can't be said for all nursing homes. Finally, we looked at the number of patients who were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 7.5 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

This nursing home also was elite in the area of long-term care, where we gave it a grade of A. Few nursing homes received a better grade in this area. Long-term care grades in this range generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. One of the criteria we considered after nursing hours was vaccines. It does not appear that this facility provided data regarding vaccinations. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The fourth category we assessed is nursing, where this nursing home was given a grade of A. This topped off a very strong profile. Very few facilities received an A- or better in every category. The nursing score considers a number of data points. The most heavily weighted factor is the amount of time nurses spent with residents. This particular nursing home provided 1.1 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at certain nursing quality measures in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We view these metrics as predictive measures of the caliber of nursing care being provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.