Appleton Municipal Hospital

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it received an A+ long-term care grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. Long-term care scores of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. After considering the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 98.13664 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is much higher than most nursing homes. Clearly, this place 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.

This nursing home also received a very impressive nursing grade. In fact, this turned out to be its second best category grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A. Nursing scores are mostly associated with the facility's nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed very well when it comes to avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

We also would like to draw your attention to the fact that this facility was given a top-shelf score of A- in our short-term care category. Our short-term care grades are presumably most critical for patients in need of a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically utilizes higher levels of highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not merely nursing services, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final statistic we considered in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.

In the last area we looked at, we found that this nursing home received a solid inspection report this year as well, with few major dings from government inspectors. It received a decent score in inspections with a grade of B. This facility didn't have any major weak links. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining our inspection grades. One of those factors is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these can be relatively minor. Although this nursing home had some deficiencies on its report, none were major deficiencies based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.