Tonganoxie Terrace

This facility received an elite long-term care grade. We gave it a grade of A- in this category, which really boosted its overall grade. Nursing homes that do well in this category tend to provide residents with better supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. After looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is much higher than the majority of nursing homes. Finally, this nursing home 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 figure.

This nursing home also excelled in inspections, where it earned an B+. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining these inspection scores. One critical factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being quite minor. While this place had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also gave this nursing home a decent score in the category of nursing care, with a grade of C. Nursing scores are largely associated with the facility's nurse staffing. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Lastly, we also looked at several nursing quality measures. While this facility got dinged a bit for its nursing hours per resident, it excelled in a few of these quality measures. With fewer than five percent of its patients experiencing pressure ulcers, it did very well in this subcategory. This is typically a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as having a policy of turning a resident more often.

Moving on to our fourth category, this facility received a grade of C for short-term care, which is generally a decent grade. Short-term care ratings are vital for people seeking rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates higher levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes a vast scope of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final datapoint we assessed in this area is the number of patients that ultimately returned home from the facility. We found that just 4.5 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home. This figure was below average.