Kansas Masonic Home

Kansas Masonic Home is located in the densely populated metropolitan area of Wichita, Kansas. This is a quality facility, with an overall grade of B+. In fact, we found this nursing home to be better than most of the nursing homes in Wichita, which has a city grade of B. We were also pleased to find that this nursing home didn't have any weak links in any of the major categories discussed below. More information about these categories can be found below.

In addition to earning a strong overall score, this nursing home fared well in short-term care. We awarded it an impressive grade of A for that category. In the area of short-term care, we strive to assess indicators of a nursing home's rehabilitation. We analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and physical therapists. We were pleased to find that this nursing home employs both registered nurses and physical therapists. The same can't be said for all nursing homes. The last metric we looked at in this area is the percentage of residents who ultimately returned home from the nursing home. This place performed as well as just about any nursing home in Kansas in this area with 68.8 percent of its patients returning home. For most facilities, fewer than half of their short-term residents are able to return home.

Adding to its impressive profile, this facility also performed at a high level in the area of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it earned one of our highest grades in that area with a score of B+. Perhaps the most critical factor we consider in calculating our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher scores in this area typically dodged the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. This facility was hit with 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe. This indicates that the government inspectors did not consider any of these deficiencies to cause an imminent risk to resident safety or health. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

In addition, this facility also received favorable nursing grades this year. In fact, we awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B+. Our nursing rating is largely associated with the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This facility offers an impressive 6.2 hours of nursing care per resident daily. This is among the more impressive totals in the country. Lastly, we also looked at nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We view these areas as reliable measures of the caliber of nursing care being provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.

The last area we analyzed proved to be this facility's poorest category. Nevertheless, even in its weakest link we still awarded it an acceptable grade of C for our long-term care category. In a long-term care setting, the primary goal is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. One of the statistics we considered in addition to this nursing home's impressive nursing hours is vaccines. This facility administered the pneumonia vaccination to 98.14815 percent of its patients. This is a proven method to avoid unnecessary hospitalizations for the aged 65 and up population. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. With just 1.61 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility had fewer hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes.