Trinity Terrace

In addition to performing well overall, this facility also earned nearly flawless government inspections. Consequently, it received one of our best scores in that area with a grade of A+. Arguably the most significant factor we consider in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Facilities with better grades in this category most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. Although this facility had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were serious based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also was given an A+ long-term care grade, rendering it one of the few nursing homes to be given multiple A+ category scores. Long-term care scores in this range generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. On top of looking at the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 86.8421 percent of its patients, which is a few points less than we were hoping for. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

To complement its strong performance in other areas, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. Our nursing rating analyzes the facility's level of nurse staffing. We weigh both the levels of licensure of those nurses as well as the amount of time spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.6 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 nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The last area we graded was short-term care, where this nursing home was given an A-. This completed an elite report card. Few facilities earned an A- or higher in each of our categories. In computing these short-term care ratings, we quantify the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our goal is to create a measure for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different facilities. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the percentage of patients who returned home from this facility. We found that 5.3 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.