Kiowa Hills Health & Rehabilitation Center

While we graded this facility incredibly poorly overall, it received a fairly respectable nursing grade this year. We gave it a grade of B- in that category. We looked at the licensure of nurses working for the facility, as well as the quantity of time the nurses spent with residents, in calculating our score in this category. This place provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This is a low total compared with most facilities. Lastly, despite not having the highest total nursing hours per resident, this nursing home performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is often a reliable indicator that a place has sufficient quality controls in place.

This nursing home also didn't grade out poorly in the category of short-term care. In fact, we awarded it a B- for that category, which ended up being another one of its more favorable grades. In our short-term care rating, we endeavor to forge a sound measure for rehabilitation services. In this process, we analyze the nursing home's level of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. In this facility's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than a typical facility. Lastly, we assessed the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most nursing homes, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.

Moving on to the category of long-term care, this facility was awarded just a D in that category. For patients seeking a permanent place to live as opposed to skilled nursing, long-term care grades are very important. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. Fortunately, this nursing home provided the vaccine to 94.117645 percent of its residents, which is an above average total. To our surprise, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility had less hospitalizations than many nursing homes. Sadly, a few of its other scores in the category weren't as favorable as these.

The final category we looked at was inspections. Unfortunately, this nursing home didn't receive favorable inspections in recent years. Consequently, we had to give it an F. You should pay close attention to any deficiencies on a nursing home's inspection reports when it receives this poor of an inspection score. We would scrutinize the level of severity of the deficiencies. This nursing home was hit with 3 deficiencies by CMS. The only favorable thing we found is that none of the deficiencies were in the categories that indicate they caused a threat to patient safety or health. Finally, CMS cited this nursing home for possible abuse or neglect. Hopefully, its performance improves in the future, but until then we simply can't recommend this facility.