Trinitas Hospital

On top of being a first rate nursing home overall, this place also excelled in inspections, where it earned an A. Not many nursing homes performed better in this area. Our inspection scores weigh several factors included in a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better scores in this category generally have few of these severe deficiencies. While this facility had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its top-shelf assessments in other areas, we awarded this nursing home a score of A- for its short-term care score. In the area of short-term care, we strive to qualify measures of a facility's rehabilitation services. We analyze a nursing home's skilled nursing services, including the ones performed by registered nurses and physical and occupational therapists. This nursing home boosted its score in this category by offering more physical therapy hours to its residents than the average facility. Finally, we looked at the number of residents who were able to return home from this facility. We found that it outperformed the majority of nursing homes in this area with 54.4 percent of its patients returning home. This is a better rate than most facilities.

This nursing home also was given a favorable long-term care score. In fact, we gave it an above average score of B+ in this area. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in long-term care it typically means it's well-staffed and is an overall good place to live on a permanent basis. After considering the amount of nursing care, we next considered the facility's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia sadly is often a deadly condition for nursing home patients so we like it when a facility doesn't take any chances. 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 less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

In the final category we scored, this nursing home was awarded a very favorable grade of B+ in our nursing category. With this score, the facility wrapped up an elite profile. Our nursing rating assesses the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We weigh both the levels of training of the nurses as well as the amount of time spent with patients. This nursing home provides 3.7 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also assessed certain nursing quality measures in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We look at these metrics as reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care being provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.