Citizens Medical Center

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A for our short-term care rating. In determining our short-term care scores, we assess the nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. This category is often a useful assessment of a facility's rehabilitation services. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 7.5 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

To add to its top-shelf achievements in other areas, we gave this facility a score of A for our long-term care rating. For long-term care residents, the facility's primary goal is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. This nursing home really impressed us in this category.

Among its many impressive grades, this facility received an excellent nursing grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of A in that category. Our nursing score assesses the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We factor in both the levels of training of those nurses as well as the number of hours spent with patients. This facility provided 0.7 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Finally, this facility also received excellent government inspections in recent years. We awarded it one of our best scores in the area of inspections, with an elite grade of A-. Few nursing homes can boast of receiving an A- or better in all four categories. Arguably the most critical factor we consider in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a facility's inspection reports. Facilities with higher scores in this category most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.