Klondike Center

While we graded this facility incredibly poorly overall, it received a solid long-term care score this year. We gave it a B in this category. Nursing homes that excel in this category typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to residents. On top of looking at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia is too frequently a life or death health condition for nursing home residents so we strongly prefer when a facility does not take any chances. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

We were also surprised to learn that this facility received a decent short-term care score in our assessment. We gave it a C in that category. Short-term care grades are often used to gauge a nursing home's rehabilitation services. In order to have high-end rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to provide higher levels of highly skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other licensed professionals. Unfortunately, this place was below average in terms of its quantity of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its patients based on the metrics we assessed. Lastly, we considered the percentage of patients who returned home from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was quite a bit below average.

We also wanted to draw your attention to this facility's inspection score where it received an F. For nursing homes that received this bad of an inspection rating, we recommend scrutinizing any severe deficiencies on its inspection report. This nursing home had 6 deficiencies by CMS. The only positive thing we can say is that none of these deficiencies were in the categories that indicate that they posed a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility also received a substantiated complaint in the last few years. There seem to be no shortage of reasons to pass on this facility.

The last category we graded is nursing, where this nursing home received a poor score here also. We gave it a lowly F in this area, which is definitely very concerning. We weighed the licensure of nurses at the nursing home, in addition to the quantity of time those nurses spent with residents, in determining our score in this area. This facility averaged only 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident each day. To go along with its subpar totals in the area of nursing hours per patient, this nursing home also did not fare as well in the quality-based measures we looked at in determining our nursing ratings. We looked at the percent of patients sustaining major falls and pressure ulcers. This facility had more pressure ulcers and falls than the average facility. This could be a bad sign when you consider that many falls and bed sores are believed to be preventable with better nursing care. Unfortunately, these metrics hurt this facility's nursing rating quite a bit.