Kirkwood by the River

In addition to being a first rate facility overall, this nursing home also excelled in our inspections category, where it received an A+. Few places fared as well in this category. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining these inspection grades. One key factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some are relatively insignificant. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This means CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Remember that deficiency-free inspections are rare in the industry.

Adding to its strong resume, this facility also received an excellent nursing score, with a grade of A. Our nursing rating is primarily tied to a facility's nurse staffing. This facility provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can many times be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Additionally, this facility also was given favorable long-term care scores in our assessment. In fact, we awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B+. Facilities that do well in this category tend to provide residents with more supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. After considering the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Vaccines are critical to keeping residents out of the hospital. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Turning to our fourth category, this facility received an excellent short-term care rating. Although this is not as strong as many of its other grades, this is nevertheless one of the more impressive grades a facility can receive. Our short-term care scores are presumably most critical for those in need of rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation usually utilizes more skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes not merely nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the percentage of patients who returned home from this nursing home. We found that 3.9 percent of this facility's patients returned home.