Claremore Nursing Home

The primary reason this ended up being a decent nursing home is that it earned an elite inspection grade. In fact, its inspection score was far superior to its overall grade. In the inspections category, we gave it an A. Inspection scores account for several factors included in a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better scores in this area generally have very few severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this nursing home had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe made us feel better about this inspection report.

This nursing home also was awarded a favorable long-term care score. As a matter of fact, we awarded them a grade of B+ in that area, which is one of our better. Nursing homes that do well in this category typically provide patients with better supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. On top of considering the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents. Vaccines are critical to keeping patients out of the hospital. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This facility's next best category was its nursing grade, where it received a grade of C. We scrutinized the licensure of nurses working for the facility, in addition to the number of hours the nurses worked with residents, in determining our grade in this area. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this nursing home surprisingly excelled in some of the quality-based metrics we assessed. In fact, it performed well in terms of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care. In many cases, the quality of nursing care is every bit as important as the number of hours of care offered.

The next category we scored is short-term care. We gave this nursing home a D in short-term care, rendering this the facility's worst grade. In crafting our short-term care scores, we look at the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The goal is to devise a tool for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. In this nursing home's case, we found that it provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. Finally, we assessed the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that just 4.6 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.