Chickasha Nursing Center

To pair with its strong overall grade, we gave this nursing home a grade of A for our inspections rating. Arguably the most important factor we look at in determining our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Places with better grades in this category typically avoided the most severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. While this nursing home had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its strong assessment, this nursing home also was given a dominant short-term care grade, with a grade of A-. In the area of short-term care, we endeavor to assess indicators of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. We assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including the ones performed by registered nurses and physical and occupational therapists. It doesn't appear that this facility provided information on registered nurse or physical therapist staffing. The last item we considered in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.

The next category we graded is long-term care. This nursing home was given an impressive long-term care score, with a grade of B+ in the category. When facilities receive a grade in this range in this category it generally means it's well-staffed and is a quality place to reside on a permanent basis. In addition to looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is far higher than most nursing homes. Clearly, this facility 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 figure.

The last category we looked at is nursing. This facility received a very good nursing score this year, with a B. While this was not quite as good as many of its other grades, this remains one of our more impressive grades for this area. Our nursing score consists of quite a few factors, many of which are tied to quantities of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed 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 facility Oklahoma in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by having a protocol of turning a patient more often.