Heritage of Red Cloud

We also wanted to point out the fact that this nursing home has received near flawless inspections in recent years. We awarded them an A+ in this area. Our inspection grades weigh several factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher scores in this category usually have few severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also was awarded a favorable long-term care grade. Indeed, we awarded it an above average grade of B+ in this area. In a long-term care setting, the nursing home's primary goal is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. In addition to considering the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 86.56716 percent of its patients, which is slightly less than we anticipated. Although its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we had hoped, at least this place was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Turning to the third area, this nursing home also earned a grade of B for its short-term care rating. This is a well above average score in this category. Our short-term care scores are presumably most important for folks needing a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually utilizes additional highly-skilled nursing services. This includes not just nursing services, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last datapoint we looked at in this area is the number of patients who returned home from the nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

The final area we rated is nursing, in which this facility received a grade of B. This facility didn't turn out to have any weak categories. Our nursing category is based on quite a few components, most of which are associated with quantities of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics 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 nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as having a protocol of moving patients more frequently.