Garfield County Health Center

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. Our inspection ratings account for a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One key criteria we look at is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher scores in this category tend to have few severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G through L. This tells you that CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also received a very impressive nursing grade. In fact, this turned out to be its second best category grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A. Our nursing grade is mostly associated with a facility's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this facility 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 frequently be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as employing a system of moving patients even once per day.

We also would like to emphasize the fact that this facility was given an impressive score of A in our long-term care area. Nursing homes that excel in this category typically are well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to residents. Once we looked at the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients out of the hospital. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

In the last category we analyzed, this nursing home received a very favorable grade of A- in our short-term care category. With this score, the facility finished off a straight A report card. Our short-term care ratings are based in part on the nursing home's quantity of skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This means a broad scope of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, in addition to other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final measure we considered in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.