Dow Rummel Village

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. These inspection grades weigh several factors, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can learn more about each of these issues by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Although this nursing home had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

One of the other reasons we graded this facility so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing grade. In fact, nursing turned out to be its second best category grade. In that category, we awarded this facility a grade of B+. Our nursing score weighs numerous factors. The most important variable is the number of hours nurses spent with residents. This particular nursing home provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the country 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 employing a protocol of turning residents more often.

Turning to another strength for this nursing home, we gave them one of our more positive grades in our short-term care category as well, with a grade of B+. Our short-term care ratings are likely more important for those needing a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually mandates more skilled nursing services. This means not just nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final statistic we looked at in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that 4.9 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

Moving on to our last category, this nursing home was awarded a very strong long-term care score. We gave it a grade of B+ in that area, topping off one of our finer report cards. In a long-term care environment, the nursing home's primary goal is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. Once we assessed the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 87.89809 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is a few points lower than we expected but still a decent figure. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.