Desoto Nursing & Rehabilitation Center

In addition to performing well in its overall grade, this nursing home performed at an even higher level in the area of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A+. Our inspection scores weigh a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better grades in this area generally have few of these severe deficiencies. This place was assessed 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered severe. This indicates that the government inspectors didn't deem any of these deficiencies an imminent threat to patient health or safety. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe made us feel better about this inspection report.

Another one of this facility's quality category scores came in the area of short-term care. We gave them one of our more favorable grades in that area, with a score of B. Short-term care grades are generally used to grade a facility's rehabilitation services. To offer highly scored rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must offer higher levels of skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. It doesn't look like this facility provided registered nurse or physical therapist staffing data. The final statistic we assessed in this area is the number of patients that returned home from the facility. We found that 6.1 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

This facility's next best category was its nursing grade, where it received a grade of B-. While this didn't quite match its scores in some of the categories discussed above, this is still a decent score. Our nursing rating analyzes quite a few datapoints, most of which are tied to quantities of nurse staffing. This facility provides only 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient daily. This is a somewhat concerning figure which is well below the national average. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures. Although this facility got docked a bit for nursing hours per resident, it actually excelled in some of these quality-based measures. With less than five percent of its residents suffering from pressure ulcers, it did very well in this metric. This is typically a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as employing a policy of moving a resident more frequently.

Switching gears to our next area, this facility was awarded an acceptable long-term care score of B-. In a long-term care environment, the primary goal is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. After looking at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 99.187 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is better than most nursing homes. This nursing home also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.