Prairie Senior at Citizens Health

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this facility also received an excellent long-term care score, with a grade of A. When facilities receive this kind of grade in this category it is usually a good sign for patient care and indicates that the nursing home is well-staffed with nurses aids. Once we assessed the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is far higher than the majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Adding to its impressive category grades, this nursing home also excelled in the area of inspections, where it earned an A. Few nursing homes performed as well in this area. Our inspection ratings weigh a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One key criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with better scores in this area usually have few severe deficiencies. While this facility had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G through L. This means that CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Among its many impressive grades, this facility received an excellent nursing grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of A- in that category. The nursing grade weighs several subcategories. The most important factor is the quantity of hours nurses spent with residents. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well when it comes to avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The final area we rated was short-term care. In this category, we awarded this nursing home an impressive grade of B. Our short-term care scores are considered to be most meaningful for folks requiring rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation generally mandates more highly-skilled nursing. This means not merely nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the number of patients that were able to return home from this facility. We found that 3.8 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.