Galena Stauss Nursing Home

This nursing home earned a strong overall score as mentioned above, but we wanted to point out its excellent long-term care rating. We awarded them an impressive grade of A in this category. Nursing homes that excel in long-term care typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to patients. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 98.7013 percent of its patients, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia sadly can be a life threatening health condition for nursing home residents so we like it when a nursing home does not leave this to chance. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This facility received high grades in the area of nursing as well. In fact, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A. We looked at the qualifications of nurses employed by the nursing home, as well as the number of hours those nurses were with patients, in computing our score in this area. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can frequently be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This nursing home was given an impressive short-term care grade as well. We gave it one of our higher grades in that category with a grade of B. Short-term care ratings are based in part on the facility's quantity of highly-skilled highly skilled professionals. This means a broad spectrum of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, in addition to 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 information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we considered the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

In the last category we looked at, we found that this nursing home received a solid government inspection report this year as well. As a result, it received a decent score in our inspection category with a B-. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing these inspection ratings. One critical factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is usually more important than the number of deficiencies, as some of these end up being quite minor. This nursing home was assessed 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered to be major deficiencies. This indicates that CMS did not consider any of these deficiencies an imminent risk to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.