Buchanan County Health Center

On top of receiving an elite overall score, this facility also earned an A+ inspection score. This score is based on the facility's recent government inspections. An A+ in this category is one of the highest complements we can offer a nursing home. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing these inspection scores. One of those factors is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some end up being relatively insignificant. While this facility had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G through L. This tells you that the inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also was awarded an A+ long-term care grade, making it one of the few nursing homes to be given multiple A+ category scores. Nursing homes that excel in this category tend to be well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to patients. After we finished looking at the amount of care provided by nurses, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 97.79412 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is very impressive. Pneumonia tragically can be a dangerous health condition for nursing home residents so we prefer when a facility doesn't leave its residents vulnerable. Clearly, this nursing home 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 figure.

In addition, this facility received high marks in the area of nursing. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A+. When determining a facility's nursing rating, we assess the quantity of hours nurses are caring for patients and the level of skill of those nurses. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

In the last category, this nursing home also was awarded a first-rate short-term care rating, with a grade of A-. This rounded out a straight A report card. In computing these short-term care grades, we analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our purpose is to create a scale for comparing the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last measure we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients that were able to return 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.