Clark Regional Medical Center

In addition to performing well overall, this nursing home earned nearly flawless government inspections. Consequently, it received one of our best grades in that area with a grade of A+. Inspection scores weigh a host of factors included in a facility's inspection report. One key criteria we consider is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with better scores in this category usually have very few of these severe deficiencies. 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.

This facility also was awarded an A+ short-term care grade, rendering it one of the few nursing homes to be awarded several A+ category grades. In computing these short-term care scores, we look at the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The purpose is to devise a tool for comparing the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of residents who ultimately returned home from this nursing home. We found that 6.2 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

Turning the page to our next category, we gave this nursing home a score of A for its long-term care score. This is a very strong grade. Long-term care ratings in this range generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. In addition to looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. Unfortunately, we were not able to locate this place's vaccination data. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

In our last area, this nursing home also was given a first-rate nursing grade, with an A. This topped off an elusive straight A report card. Nursing ratings are based in large part on quantity of nursing care available. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well when it comes to minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.