La Crescent Health Services

One of the many reasons this ended up being a quality nursing home is that it received an impressive grade in inspections. Inspections turned out to be its best category. In that area, we awarded this facility an A. Inspection scores are tied to many items located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that excel in this category typically have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these places should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. This particular nursing home received 8 deficiencies on its inspection report. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also was elite in the area of short-term care, where we awarded it a score of A. Only a select group of facilities fared better in this category. In determining our short-term care ratings, we assess a nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. This category is frequently a meaningful assessment of a facility's rehabilitation. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the number of patients that were able to return home from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

Additionally, this nursing home also received favorable long-term care scores this year. In fact, we awarded it one of our more favorable scores in that area, with a grade of B+. Long-term care ratings of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. After considering the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is far higher than the majority of nursing homes. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The fourth category we rated was nursing, where this facility was awarded a grade of B+. This completed a very strong report card. Very few nursing homes received a B+ or better in in each area we assessed. There are several data points within this grade. Most of these factors are tied to staffing levels. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at certain nursing quality measures in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We look at these metrics as predictive measures of the quality of nursing care being provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.