Jenkins Living Center

Jenkins Living Center is a large non-profit nursing home located in Watertown, South Dakota. This facility is one of the most elite nursing homes we assessed. A grade of this caliber requires superb scores across the board. We were so impressed with this facility that we rated it as one of the 25 best facilities in South Dakota. One of the major highlights of this facility's remarkable report card is its short-term care rating. We discuss short-term care in the next paragraph.

In addition to faring well overall, this nursing home received high marks in our short-term care category as well. It received our highest score in that category with a score of A+. Short-term care grades are vital for prospective residents in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally utilizes higher levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes a wide scope of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. One of this nursing home's strength is that it offers more hours of care from registered nurses to its residents. Finally, we looked at the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. This place outperformed the vast majority of nursing homes in the nation in this area with 63.1 percent of its patients returning home. This is a much higher rate than most facilities.

Adding to this nursing home's impressive resume, we awarded this nursing home an A for our inspections rating. Inspection grades weigh several factors, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these issues by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This facility was assessed 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered severe. This tells you that the government inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies to pose an imminent risk to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received an impressive grade of A in our nursing category. In calculating our nursing scores, we analyze both staffing levels and the skill levels of those nurses. This facility provided 3.8 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed better than average in this area. This is often a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can typically be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Switching gears to our last category, this facility also performed well in the long-term care category. In fact, we gave it a grade of A- for that area. This finalized a straight A report card. Nursing homes that excel in long-term care typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to patients. One of the data points we considered on top of nursing hours was vaccinations. This facility administered the pneumonia vaccine to 99.625465 percent of its patients. Vaccination is a reliable method to minimize unnecessary deaths for the elderly population. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 1.31 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this nursing home has less hospitalizations than many nursing homes.