Avera Maryhouse Long Term Care

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this nursing home received an A+ inspection grade. This score is based on the facility's recent inspection reports. An A+ in this category is one of the highest complements we can pay to a nursing home. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in calculating our inspection ratings. One of those factors is 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 nursing home was hit with 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe. This tells you that CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies to pose an imminent risk to resident health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

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. Our nursing grade is mostly tied to a nursing home's nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed 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 facility the state 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 having a protocol of moving a patient at least once a day.

This nursing home also was awarded a strong short-term care grade. This actually ended up being this facility's third strongest category score. In that category, we gave this facility a score of A. Short-term care grades are based in part on a facility's quantity of highly-skilled nursing services. This means a vast range of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, not to mention other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final statistic we looked at in this area is the percentage of residents that returned home from the nursing home. We found that 5 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

In the final category we analyzed, this nursing home was given a very favorable grade of A in our long-term care category. With this grade, the facility wrapped up a straight A report card. Facilities that receive this type of grade in long-term care tend to provide consistent around the clock care to ensure patients are kept in good health. On top of assessing the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 95.69893 percent of its patients, which is more than the vast majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.