Clark's Mountain Nursing Center

We also wanted to emphasize that this nursing home has received near flawless health inspections recently. We gave them an A+ in this area. Inspection scores are based on several datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that score well in this category typically have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. While this place had a few minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that the government inspectors did not consider 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.

Adding to its impressive profile, this facility also excelled in our long-term care area. In fact, we gave it a grade of A in that area. Nursing homes that excel in this category typically provide residents with closer supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. On top of assessing the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 99.28058 percent of its residents, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia sadly is often a dangerous condition for nursing home residents so we like it when a nursing home does not leave this to chance. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This nursing home was given an impressive short-term care grade as well. We awarded it one of our higher scores in that category with a grade of B. Our short-term care scores are thought to be most important for folks needing rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation typically requires higher levels of highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not merely nursing, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 5 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

Moving on to the next area, this facility was awarded an acceptable nursing grade. Even though this is not nearly as elite as several of its other grades, this is really not a poor grade. When determining our nursing scores, we assess both staffing levels and the skill levels of the nurses. This nursing home averages just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day, which is not an impressive total. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics. While this nursing home got docked a bit for its nursing hours, it actually excelled in some of these quality-based measures. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it did well in this statistic. This can be an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as employing a system of moving residents more often.