Buffalo Prairie Center for Rehab and Healthcare

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A for our inspections rating. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating our inspection grades. One of those factors is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies are quite insignificant. While this facility had a few minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This tells you the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

One of the other reasons we graded this nursing home so well is that it received a strong long-term care score. Indeed, long-term care ended up being its second most impressive category score. In that area, we awarded this nursing home a score of A-. Facilities that receive this kind of score in long-term care tend to provide consistent 24/7 care to ensure residents are kept in good health. After looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 72.38806 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which happens to be a bit below what we anticipated but still a reasonably acceptable percentage. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

The third category we graded was short-term care. This nursing home received a favorable short-term care grade, with a B in this category. Our short-term care scores are probably most meaningful for patients in need of rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation typically mandates additional skilled nursing services. This means not just nursing, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like this nursing home provided information about its staffing of registered nurses or physical therapists. The last metric we considered in this area is the percentage of residents who ultimately were able to return home from the facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

The next area we assessed is nursing. We gave this facility one of our better grades in this category, with a grade of B. This facility proved to be relatively strong across the board. The nursing rating is based on quite a few data points, many of which are based on levels of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0 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 facility the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as having a protocol of moving a patient even once per day.