Genesis Medical Center � Dewitt

We also wanted to emphasize that this nursing home earned near flawless inspections in recent years. We gave them an impressive grade of A+ in this area. Perhaps the most significant factor we consider in calculating our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Places with better grades in this category most likely dodged the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. Although this place had a few 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. Our nursing score is mostly based on the facility's nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of moving a resident even once per day.

We also wanted to alert you to the fact that this facility was awarded an impressive score of A- in our short-term care area. In forming our short-term care grades, we quantify the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our goal is to formulate a scale for comparing the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. 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 last item we assessed in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We discovered that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.

In our last area, we gave this facility a grade of A+ for its long-term care score. This finished off a very strong report card. Facilities that do well in long-term care tend to provide residents with closer supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. On top of looking at the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 99.58159 percent of its patients, which is far higher than the average nursing home. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.