Grace Living Center-Stillwater

Although this place's overall grade was not a highlight, it did receive a very good score in the category of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a B+ for that category, which is one of our better scores. Our inspection grades account for a host of factors included in a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we look at is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. You should avoid nursing homes with a list of deficiencies flagged. This nursing home was hit with 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered to be major deficiencies. This indicates that CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies to pose an immediate threat to patient safety or health. A few minor deficiencies are not the end of the world.

This nursing home received its next best category score in the area of long-term care. We gave this nursing home a B- in this category, which is a decent grade. In computing our long-term care scores, we analyze the personal care offered to the facility's patients. One of the criteria we considered after nursing hours is vaccines. Thankfully, this facility provided the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its residents. Lastly, this facility was also able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

We awarded this facility a respectable grade in the area of nursing as well, with a grade of C. When calculating a facility's nursing score, we consider the number of hours nurses spend with residents and the skill levels of those nurses. This particular facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident daily. This figure is significantly below the national average. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures. While this facility got docked a bit for nursing hours, it excelled in a few of these quality-based measures. With fewer than five percent of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, it did well in this metric. This is typically an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as employing a protocol of moving a resident even once per day.

Switching gears to the last area, this facility really didn't fare well here either. With a very poor grade of F in short-term care, this is about as terrible as it gets. In the category of short-term care, we try to qualify indicators of a facility's rehabilitation services. We look at the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. With its score in this area, we were not stunned to learn that this nursing home was well below average in terms of its number of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its residents based on the metrics we looked at. Honestly, this was what we expected to find. The final metric we considered in this category is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 4.2 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these subpar metrics sunk this nursing home's short-term care score.