Bucktail Medical Center

In addition to performing well in its overall grade, this facility received an excellent nursing grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of A in that category. Nursing scores are based in large part on quantity of nursing care available. This facility provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures 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 the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as having a policy of turning residents more frequently.

In addition, this facility also received a nearly flawless government inspection report. As a result, it earned one of our best grades in that area with a score of A. Perhaps the most critical factor we consider in determining our inspection grades is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Facilities with higher scores in this area typically dodged the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. Fortunately, although this nursing home had a few minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This means the government inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A couple minor dings aren't necessarily something to panic about.

Contributing to its high-end profile, this facility also was given a strong short-term care grade, with a grade of A. With our short-term care grade, we try to forge a sound gauge for rehabilitation services. In doing so, we look at the facility's levels of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the number of patients who who were able to eventually return home from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.

The next category we rated turned out to be this nursing home's poorest category. Nevertheless, even in its worst category we still awarded it a decent grade of C in long-term care. If you are looking for anything other than short-term rehabilitation, you should take a close look at each nursing home's long-term care scores. One of the data points we considered after nursing hours was vaccines. Fortunately, this nursing home provided the pneumonia vaccination to 98.86363 percent of its patients. This facility keeps its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.