Eureka Nursing Center

To go along with its strong overall score, we awarded this place an A for the area of inspections. Inspection grades are tied to many items located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that receive favorable grades in this area typically have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. While this facility had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

One of the other reasons we rated this facility so favorably is that it received a very impressive long-term care score. Indeed, long-term care turned out to be its second highest category grade. In that category, we awarded this facility a grade of A-. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in this category it typically means it's well-staffed and is an overall good place to reside on a permanent basis. After assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is significantly higher than most nursing homes. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep 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.

Additionally, this facility also was awarded favorable short-term care grades in our assessment. Indeed, we awarded them one of our better grades in that area, with a grade of B. Short-term care grades are based in part on the facility's quantity of skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This means a wide spectrum of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, not to mention other forms of therapy. Unfortunately, it doesn't appear that this nursing home provided data regarding its registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. The last measure we looked at in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return home. We found that 5.7 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.

The last category we assessed is nursing. In this category, we gave this nursing home an acceptable grade of B-. This turned out to be this facility's worst area. We weighed the licensure of nurses at the facility, as well as the number of hours the nurses were with patients, in determining our rating in this category. This place averages 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis, which is well below average. Finally, our nursing ratings also factor in quality-based assessments, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours per resident, this facility actually performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is generally a good indicator that a nursing home has sufficient quality controls in place. Some falls could be avoided if a facility provides enough nurses to assist its residents.