Appleton Municipal Hospital

Appleton Municipal Hospital is located in Appleton, Minnesota, a city with a population of 2,066 people. This nursing home is an A+ rated facility, which is our absolute highest grade. We were so impressed with this nursing home that we ranked it in the top ten percentile of all nursing homes nationally. We also gave this facility impressive ratings in all of the major categories. More information about these categories can be found below.

We also found that this facility excelled in our long-term care rating. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. When nursing homes receive a grade in this range in this category it typically means it has plenty of staff and is a quality place to live on a permanent basis. In addition to considering the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is much higher than the average nursing home. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Adding to its impressive category scores, this nursing home also excelled in the category of inspections, where it received a grade of A. Perhaps the most critical factor we consider in computing our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Facilities with better scores in this area typically avoided the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. While this place had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its strong resume, this facility also received an excellent nursing score, with a grade of A. There are several factors within this category. Most of the criteria are tied to the quantity and quality of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 3.5 hours of nursing care per patient daily. At least one fourth of this care was provided by registered nurses, which are skilled nurses. This is a high ratio of skilled nursing care. In determining our ratings, we apply additional weight to care provided by registered or licensed nurses. Finally, we also assessed certain nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We view these areas as reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care being provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.

Switching gears to our last category, this nursing home received an excellent short-term care grade. We gave it an A- in this category, giving this facility straight A's. Our short-term care scores are likely more critical for folks requiring rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation usually requires additional skilled nursing. This includes not merely nursing, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. When we assessed this facility's nursing hours, we found it offered more care from registered nurses than most nursing homes. The last measure we assessed in this area is the number of residents that eventually returned home from the facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home rather than remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.