Reeds Cove Health & Rehabilitation

This nursing home earned a strong overall grade as discussed above, but we especially wanted to point out its excellent nursing grade. We gave them an A in this area. We weighed the levels of nurses at the nursing home, as well as the number of hours those nurses worked with residents, in determining our rating in this area. This nursing home averages 0.6 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 place Kansas in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as having a policy of turning residents more often.

This nursing home fared well in the category of short-term care. As a result, we awarded it a grade of A- for that category, which happens to be one of our higher grades. Our short-term care ratings are probably most meaningful for those requiring rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation generally requires more skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes not only nursing services, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we considered the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 5.6 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

Moving on to another of this nursing home's strengths, it also received a very impressive inspection rating. This proved to be one of its best grades. In that category, we awarded this facility a grade of B+. Arguably the most important factor we consider in computing our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with better grades in this category typically avoided the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. While this place had a few deficiencies on its inspection report, none were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. A few relatively minor deficiencies aren't something to panic about.

This nursing home's worst area was long-term care, which is the final category we scored. For this category, we gave this nursing home a grade of D. We wanted to point out this possible weak spot, however, you should not focus exclusively on a single bad area either. For long-term care residents, the facility's primary goal is to maintain patients' quality of life and keep them safe. One of the factors we considered after nurse's aid hours was vaccinations. Fortunately, this nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. To our surprise, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this nursing home has fewer hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes. Sadly, a few of its other scores in this category weren't as favorable as these.