Koester Pavilion

This facility earned a solid overall grade as described above, but we really wanted to point out its excellent inspections in recent years. We awarded them an A- in this category. Our inspection scores are tied to several pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that excel in this area typically have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these places generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G through L. This tells you that the government inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A couple of minor deficiencies shouldn't lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

We also awarded this nursing home an impressive score in long-term care. This nursing home received a B in this area, which is one of our more favorable scores. Long-term care scores in this range generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. After assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 77.35294 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which happens to be slightly lower than we were hoping for but still a respectable percentage. Clearly, this facility 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 one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Another strength of this nursing home is its favorable grade in nursing. We gave them one of our better scores in that area, with an impressive grade of D. There are quite a few datapoints included in this grade. Most of these criteria relate to levels of nurse staffing. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This is an alarmingly low total. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in calculating our nursing ratings. This nursing home fared well in the area of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls.

The final area we scored is short-term care. We gave it an abysmal F for this category, which is an abysmal grade. This is clearly a major concern. In determining our short-term care ratings, we analyze the facility's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other types of therapists. This category is often a solid assessment of the nursing home's rehabilitation services. With a score of this caliber for this category, we were not stunned to discover that this facility was well below average in several staffing areas we looked at. In fact, it provided significantly fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per patient than most other nursing homes. The last datapoint we assessed in this area is the number of residents who ultimately returned home from the nursing home. This nursing home struggled quite a bit in this area as well, with just 4.4 percent of its patients returning home. Unfortunately, this was well below the national average.