Deer Lodge

Although we gave this facility a terrible overall grade, we awarded it a grade of B- for our nursing rating. In computing our nursing grades, we look at both the number of hours nurses spend with residents and the levels of licensure of the nurses. This facility averages 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient per day, which is well below average. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this place actually excelled in some of the quality-based metrics we assessed. It scored well in terms of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers.

This facility also didn't perform terribly in the area of short-term care. Indeed, we awarded it a grade of B- for that category, which turned out to be among its more favorable grades. In determining our short-term care scores, we analyze the nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. This score is considered to be a fair assessment of the nursing home's ability to rehabilitate patients. In this facility's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than the average facility. Lastly, we considered the percentage of residents that ultimately were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was quite a bit below average.

This nursing home received a grade of just D in the area of inspections. One of the more critical factors in evaluating inspection reports is deficiencies. We recommend you pay close attention to the severity of those deficiencies. This particular nursing home had 6 deficiencies by government inspectors. The only favorable thing we found is that none of these deficiencies were in the categories that suggest that they created a risk to patient safety or health. Finally, we want to point out that this nursing home received large government fines in recent years amounting to over $100,000. This typically signifies that a nursing home's bad performance has been an issue for multiple years.

Switching gears to the next area, this nursing home really did not fare very well in this area either. Due to an abysmal grade of F in long-term care, this is just about as as uninspiring as it gets. Nursing homes that don't fare well in this category typically aren't as well-staffed and are lagging in some of the areas of routine personal care we assessed. Once we finished looking at the volume of nursing care, we then looked at the facility's vaccination record. Frankly, we were a bit worried that this facility vaccinated just 88.554214 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Surprisingly, this facility was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility had less hospitalizations than most nursing homes. This was its best score in this category.