Frontier Rehab & Extended Care

In addition to earning a strong overall rating, this nursing home performed even better in the area of inspections which is based on the facility's recent inspections. In fact, we gave it an A for this area, which is one of our highest scores. Inspection grades account for a host of factors found on a facility's inspection report. One key criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher grades in this category usually have very few severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G through L. This means that 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. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Among this nursing home's other achievements is its superb long-term care grade. We gave them one of our best scores in that category, with a grade of A-. When facilities receive a grade in this range in long-term care it typically means it's well-staffed and is an overall good place to reside on a permanent basis. On top of looking at the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 99.53703 percent of its residents, which is far higher than the majority of nursing homes. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This facility really excelled in the category of short-term care, where we gave it a grade of A-. Only a select group of nursing homes performed more favorably in this area. In determining our short-term care ratings, we quantify the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our goal is to formulate a measure for comparing the rehabilitation services of various facilities. We weren't able to track down information about this nursing home's registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. Finally, we considered the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 6.4 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

The final area we assessed is nursing, where this nursing home was given a grade of B-. Although this wound up being its weakest category grade, this is nevertheless not a bad grade. In determining a facility's nursing grade, we look at the number of hours nurses are seeing patients as well as the skill levels of those nurses. This place averages just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day, which is well below average. Lastly, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based metrics, such as preventing major falls. While this facility did not have as many nursing hours as many of the other facilities we looked at, it was still better than average in the area of preventing falls. This is often a good indicator of how carefully a facility's nursing staff is tending to its patients. Major falls can typically be avoided if more nurses and better safety protocols are in place.