Glacier Care Center

Glacier Care Center is a small non-profit nursing home in Cut Bank, Montana. Featuring an overall score of B, this is a fine nursing home. Based on our ratings, this facility has quite a bit going for it. This facility's impressive report card was highlighted by its inspection score, which we will address in the next section.

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this place also earned top notch health inspections in recent years. We gave them one of our higher grades in this category, with an A. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining our inspection scores. One key factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some end up being quite insignificant. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in the industry.

Among this facility's other strengths is its elite nursing grade. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of A. Nursing ratings are largely associated with a facility's nurse staffing. This place provides an impressive 3.9 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Out of this total, nearly one fourth of those hours were provided by registered nurses, which is among the most highly trained levels of nurses. Finally, this place also performed well in several of the quality-based metrics we assessed. In terms of the percentage of its residents suffering falls leading to major injury, this place performed as well as any facility in the state.

The next category we graded is short-term care. This nursing home was given a favorable short-term care score, with a B in the area. Short-term care ratings are based in part on the facility's quantity of skilled highly skilled professionals. This means a vast spectrum of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, not to mention other forms of therapy. One of this nursing home's strengths is registered nurse hours. We found that it offers more care from registered nurses to its residents than most facilities. The last datapoint we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients who ultimately returned home from the nursing home. We found that 32.1 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home rather than remaining at the facility permanently.

The last area we looked at was long-term care, which turned out to be this facility's weakest category. Sadly, it received an abysmal F for this category, which is clearly somewhat disappointing. When nursing homes receive this type of grade in long-term care it is typically a bad sign for resident care and it may mean that the place is not as well-staffed with nurses and aids. This facility's vaccination records weren't as favorable some of its other statistics in this category, such as its number of nursing hours per resident. This facility provided the pneumonia vaccine to just 90.17857 percent of its residents. We'd love to see some improvement in this area next year. To our surprise, this nursing home was actually decent at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.46 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. This was its best feature in this category.