Duquoin Nursing and Rehab

In addition to being a strong nursing home overall, it also received A+ government inspections in recent years. Its inspections were nearly flawless. Arguably the most important factor we look at in computing our inspection grades is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher scores in this category typically dodged the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G through L. This tells you 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.

This nursing home also was awarded a favorable long-term care score. In fact, we gave it an above average score of B+ in this area. Facilities that excel in long-term care typically provide residents with better supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. Once we concluded our assessment of the quantity of care provided by nurses, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is very impressive. Pneumonia sadly can be a dangerous ailment for nursing home residents so we prefer when a nursing home does not take any chances. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Another one of this facility's impressive category grades came in the area of nursing care. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B. There are numerous subcategories within this area. Many of these criteria are tied to levels of 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-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 facility the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a system of moving patients more frequently.

The next area we rated ended up being this facility's poorest area. However, even in its weakest link we still awarded it an acceptable grade of C for our short-term care category. Our short-term care scores are probably more important for residents in need of a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally mandates higher levels of skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes not just nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final statistic we looked at in this area is the percentage of residents who who were able to eventually return home from the facility. We found that just 3.9 percent of this facility's patients returned home.