Emerald Care Center Midwest

In addition to receiving a strong overall grade, this facility performed well in short-term care. In fact, we awarded it an A for that category, which is one of our best scores. Our short-term care scores are based in part on a facility's quantity of highly-skilled nursing services. This means a wide scope of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, not to mention other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last measure we assessed in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We found that 6.7 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

This nursing home also performed well in inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless government inspection report this year. It received one of our best grades in that category with a score of A-. Few facilities with an overall grade in this range performed as well in multiple categories. These inspection scores take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these factors by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This facility was hit with 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none of the deficiencies were considered to be major deficiencies. This tells you that the government inspectors didn't consider any of these deficiencies an immediate threat to resident safety or health. We should point out that deficiency-free inspections are uncommon in this industry.

Turning to the category of nursing care, this facility didn't perform quite as well in this area as some of the categories discussed above. Nevertheless, a grade of C in this category is by no means a bad score. Nursing ratings are tied to nurse staffing levels. This nursing home averages just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures. Although this nursing home got docked a bit for nursing hours, it actually excelled in a few of these quality-based metrics. With less than five percent of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, it did well in this metric. This is typically 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 97.297295 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 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.