Heritage of Red Cloud

On top of being a first rate nursing home overall, this nursing home performed well in the area of inspections, where it earned an A+. Few nursing homes fared this well in this category. Our inspection ratings account for several factors found on a facility's inspection report. One key criteria we look at is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher grades in this category tend to have few of these severe deficiencies. Although this nursing home had a few deficiencies on its report, none of them were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also was strong in the area of long-term care, where it received a grade of A. Not many facilities performed better in this category. For prospective residents looking for a permanent place to live rather than rehabilitation, long-term care grades are very important. On top of looking at the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 92.85714 percent of its patients, which is a bit below what we expected. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This facility received a very good nursing grade this year as well. It received one of our better scores in that category with a grade of B+. Our nursing score assesses the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We weigh both the levels of training of those nurses as well as the number of hours spent with residents. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures 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 the state 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 turning a resident at least once a day.

Switching gears to the next category, this nursing home was given a very strong short-term care rating. Although this is not quite as good as many of its other category grades, this is nevertheless one of our better grades we offer. Short-term care grades are often used to grade a facility's rehabilitation services. To offer good rehabilitation services, facilities generally must offer better levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other highly skilled individuals. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home.