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 nursing home also received an A+ nursing grade, making it one of the few nursing homes to receive multiple A+ category grades. Our nursing score is primarily based on the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also assessed 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.

Moving on our next area, we gave this facility a grade of A for its long-term care grade. This is a superb grade. Facilities that do well in this category typically provide residents with closer supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. On top of assessing the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 98.58156 percent of its patients, which is significantly higher than most nursing homes. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The last area we scored was short-term care, where this nursing home received a grade of A-. This rounded out a very strong profile. Not many facilities earned an A- or better in every category. In calculating these short-term care ratings, we look at the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The objective is to devise a tool for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of residents who eventually returned home from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.