Barnes-Kasson County Hospital

In addition to receiving a strong overall grade, this facility performed even better in our inspections category which is based on the facility's recent government inspection reports. We awarded it an A- for this category, which is one of our best scores. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing these inspection grades. One key factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some end up being relatively insignificant. While this nursing home had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. We should point out that deficiency-free inspections are uncommon in this industry.

This nursing home is also above average in the category of short-term care, where it was given a grade of B+. It outperformed most facilities in this category. Short-term care grades are typically used to judge a nursing home's performance with rehabilitation. To provide quality rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to feature better levels of highly skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other highly skilled individuals. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final statistic we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients who returned home from the nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

Turning to our third category, this nursing home also received a score of B+ for its long-term care rating. This is a well above average score in this category. When nursing homes receive a grade in this range in long-term care it typically means it's well-staffed and is a quality place to reside on a permanent basis. Once we looked at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents healthy. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The last category we rated was nursing. We awarded this nursing home one of our more favorable grades in that area, with a grade of B. This facility turned out to be very solid across the board. In calculating a nursing home's nursing score, we weigh the quantity of hours nurses spend with patients and the skill levels of the nurses. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also assessed certain nursing quality measures in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We look at these metrics as reliable measures of the caliber of nursing care being provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.