Elk City Nursing Center

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. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining our inspection ratings. One key factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some of these are relatively insignificant. This facility was hit with 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe deficiencies. This tells you that CMS did not deem any of these deficiencies to create an immediate threat to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also received an A+ for its long-term care grade. Facilities that receive this type of grade in long-term care typically provide consistent 24/7 care to make sure residents are kept in good health. One of the statistics we considered on top of nursing hours is vaccines. This facility provided the pneumonia vaccination to 97.297295 percent of its patients. This is a proven method to minimize unnecessary deaths for the senior population. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This facility's next best category was its nursing grade, where it received a grade of C. While this didn't quite match its scores in some of the categories discussed above, this is still a decent score. Our nursing rating consists of a handful of components, however, the paramount consideration is the number of nurse hours per patient per week. This place provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This is a much lower figure than we were hoping for. Lastly, we also looked at several nursing quality measures. While this nursing home got docked a bit for its nursing hours, it actually excelled in a few of these quality-based measures. With less than five percent of its patients experiencing pressure ulcers, it performed well in this subcategory. This is typically an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a system of moving patients even once per day.

The final category we looked at is short-term care, which was this nursing home's least impressive category. We awarded this facility a grade of D in that area. However, we wouldn't judge this nursing home based only on a single weak area, since it received several excellent grades in other categories. In crafting our short-term care scores, we quantify the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The purpose is to create a tool for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. In this nursing home's case, it looks like it offers less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than the typical facility. Finally, we looked at the percentage of patients who returned home from this nursing home. This facility didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was well off the national average.