Gallatin Rest Home

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received an impressive grade of A in our short-term care category. In crafting our short-term care ratings, we analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The goal is to devise a scale for comparing the rehabilitation services of different facilities. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final item we looked at in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that 5.9 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

Adding to its impressive category grades, this facility excelled in the category of inspections, where it earned an A. Not many nursing homes performed as well in this area. Inspection ratings account for a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One key criteria we consider is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher scores in this area generally have few of these severe deficiencies. Although this nursing home had some deficiencies on its report, none of them were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also excelled in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of A. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. We looked at the levels of nurses at the facility, as well as the quantity of hours the nurses spent with residents, in computing our rating in this category. This nursing home averages 0.8 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place Montana in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as having a policy of moving residents at least once a day.

Turning to the fourth area, this facility also performed well in our long-term care category. In fact, we awarded it an A- for this category. This rounded out a straight A profile. Nursing homes that excel in long-term care tend to be well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to patients. On top of looking at the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 94.214874 percent of its patients, which is very impressive. Pneumonia tragically can be a life or death health condition for nursing home residents so we strongly prefer when a nursing home doesn't take any chances. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.