Accura Healthcare of Baxter

One of the reasons this ended up being a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ in our inspections category. This is simply as good as it gets in this very important category. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing our inspection grades. One key factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being quite insignificant. This place was hit with 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none of the deficiencies were considered to be major deficiencies. This indicates that the inspectors did not deem any of these deficiencies to create an imminent risk to resident safety or health. We should point out that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in the industry.

This facility fared well in the category of short-term care. As a result, we awarded it a grade of A- for that area, which happens to be one of our most elite grades. In determining our short-term care grades, we analyze the nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other licensed professionals. This score is more often than not a solid assessment of the facility's rehabilitation services. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we considered the percentage of patients who eventually returned home from this facility. We found that 5.4 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

Another one of this facility's impressive category grades came in the area of nursing care. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B+. The nursing score features a number of factors. The most heavily weighted variable is the number of hours nurses spend with residents. This particular nursing home provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of turning a patient more often.

The last area we rated is long-term care, in which this nursing home received a C. Although this proved to be its worst category grade, this is still nothing to be ashamed of. Our long-term care grades are essential for prospective residents looking for non-healthcare services such as personal care. After considering the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 92.38095 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is somewhat below what we anticipated but still a decent percentage. Fortunately, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.