Firesteel Healthcare Community

Firesteel Healthcare Community is a nursing home in Mitchell, South Dakota, which has 18,375 people. We awarded this nursing home an A- overall grade, ranking it in the top third of all nursing homes in the country. We really can not say enough good things about this facility. If you look below, you will see this place's category scores, which are also impressive.

With an overall grade this high, it should come as no surprise that this facility performed well in inspections, where it received an A. These inspection ratings take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these items by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This place received 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe. This tells you that CMS did not consider any of these deficiencies an imminent risk to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its dominant performance in other areas, we gave this facility a score of A- for its long-term care grade. When nursing homes receive this kind of score in long-term care it is typically a good sign for patient care and indicates that the facility is well-staffed with nurses aids. After considering the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 98.588234 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents out of the hospital. This place also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had only 1.45 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days.

Turning to an additional strength for this nursing home, we awarded them one of our better grades in our short-term care category as well, with a B+. In determining these short-term care ratings, we assess the facility'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 comparing the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. One of this nursing home's strength is that it offers more hours of care from registered nurses to its residents. Lastly, we looked at the number of residents who were able to return home from this nursing home. This place performed decently in this area, with 47.4 percent of its residents returning home.

Moving on to the next category, this facility was given a very strong nursing score. In fact, we awarded it a grade of B+ in that area, wrapping up one of our better report cards. When determining our nursing scores, we look at both nursing hours and the skill levels of those nurses. This facility provided 3.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some quality-based measures in this category. This facility fared well in some of the quality measures we assessed. By way of illustration, in terms of the number of its residents suffering from pressure ulcers, this place performed better than the national average. This is generally an indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided with better nursing care.