Clark Regional Medical Center

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. Inspection ratings are tied to several datapoints found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that score well in this category have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. 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.

In addition, this facility was given elite marks in the category of short-term care. As a result, it received one of our most impressive grades in that area with a score of A+. In the category of short-term care, we endeavor to assess indicators of a facility's rehabilitation. We look at the facility's skilled nursing services, including the ones performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. One of this nursing home's strengths is registered nurse hours. We found that it offers more care from registered nurses to its residents than most facilities. The last metric we assessed in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We found that it performed as well as just about any facility in Kentucky in this area with 69.9 percent of its patients returning home. For most facilities, less than half of their short-term residents are able to return home.

This nursing home also received a very impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A. Nursing ratings are primarily based on the facility's level of nurse staffing. This particular facility provided 6.2 hours of nursing care per patient daily. This was one of the better totals we found. In addition, we found that a significant percentage of this care was provided by registered nurses, which are highly skilled nurses. In addition to offering impressive levels of nursing care, this facility also excelled in the quality measures we looked at. By way of illustration, it performed as well as any nursing home in the nation in terms of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We view these areas as good measures of the quality of nursing care being provided.

The fourth area we looked at was long-term care, where this nursing home received a grade of A. This topped off an elite profile. Very few facilities received an A- or better in each of our categories. For prospective residents in need of a permanent place to live as opposed to rehabilitation, long-term care grades are an important measure. On top of assessing the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. We were not able to find information about this nursing home's vaccination rates. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.