Elsberry Missouri Health Care Center

To go along with its strong overall grade, we gave this place an A+ for our inspections rating. Arguably the most critical factor we consider in computing our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Facilities with better scores in this category most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. While this nursing home had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you CMS did not deem 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.

Contributing to its superb resume, this facility also excelled in our long-term care area. In fact, we gave it a score of A- for the category. When nursing homes receive a grade in this range in long-term care it typically means it's well-staffed and is a quality place to reside on a permanent basis. After considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is far higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. 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 profile, this facility also earned a grade of B for its nursing rating. This is a well above average score in this category. The nursing rating consists of several factors, but the most important one is the number of nurse hours spent with patients. 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 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 nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by having a policy of moving patients at least once a day.

Turning to the fourth area, this facility was awarded an extremely favorable short-term care rating. Even though this isn't as dominant as some of its other scores, this is still one of our more favorable grades a facility can receive. In the area of short-term care, we seek to evaluate measures of a facility's rehabilitation. We analyze a facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. Unfortunately, we were not able to locate information about this nursing home's registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. Lastly, we considered the number of patients who ultimately returned home from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.