Emerald Care Center Midwest

In addition to receiving a strong overall rating, this nursing home performed even better in the area of inspections which is associated with the facility's recent inspection reports. We awarded it an A- for that category, which is one of our best scores. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in calculating these inspection grades. One key factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being quite insignificant. While this facility had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means 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. We should point out that deficiency-free inspections are rare in this industry.

Contributing to this nursing home's list of achievements, it also received a high-end short-term care grade. We gave them an elite strong of A- in this area. Our short-term care scores are likely most critical for people requiring rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation typically utilizes more highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes not merely nursing, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like this nursing home provided data regarding its registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. The final measure we assessed in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that 5.8 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

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. Nursing ratings are heavily correlated with quality and quantity of nursing care. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics 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 providing better nursing care, such as having a protocol of moving a patient more frequently.

Turning to the last area, this nursing home was given a grade of C for long-term care, which is generally an acceptable grade. For long-term care residents, the primary objective is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. After considering the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 99.324326 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Lastly, this facility was also able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.