Dixon Nursing & Rehab

In addition to performing well in its overall grade, this nursing home received a nearly flawless inspection report. Consequently, we gave it one of our highest scores in that category with a grade of A. Inspection ratings weigh several factors, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these factors by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This facility was assessed 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered to be severe. This tells you that the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies 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 resume, this facility also excelled in our long-term care area. In fact, we gave it a score of A in that category. When facilities receive this kind of score in this category it is a good sign for patient care and indicates that the place is well-staffed with nurses aids. On top of considering the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 96.8 percent of its residents. Vaccines are critical to keeping residents out of the hospital. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Adding to its impressive resume, this nursing home also excelled in our nursing category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A- for that category. Nursing grades are primarily tied to a facility's nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of moving a patient at least once a day.

The final category we analyzed was short-term care. This nursing home received a very good short-term care rating in our assessment, with a B-. Although this wasn't nearly as dominant as some of its other scores, this is nevertheless a decent grade in this category. Our short-term care grade is often used to assess a facility's performance with rehabilitation. In order to offer highly graded rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to feature better levels of skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the number of residents that were able to return home from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was quite a bit below the national average.