Little Cottonwood Rehabilitation and Nursing

On top of being a quality facility overall, this place excelled in the area of inspections, where it received an A+. Few facilities performed better in that area. Inspection scores weigh a host of factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher grades in this area tend to have very few of these severe deficiencies. Although this place had some deficiencies on its report, none of them were major deficiencies based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Contributing to its profile, this facility also received a grade of B+ for its long-term care rating. This is an above average score in this category. Nursing homes that excel in this category tend to provide patients with more supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. Once we assessed the quantity of nursing care, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia can be a life or death condition for nursing home residents so we like it when a facility doesn't leave its residents vulnerable. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Next, we looked at the nursing category where we awarded this nursing home a grade of B-. This facility didn't perform quite as well in this category as it did in some other categories. Nevertheless, this is still a respectable score. Our nursing rating looks at the facility's nurse staffing levels. We consider both the levels of training of the nurses and the quantity of hours spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.2 hours of nursing care per patient per day. This is a lower figure than we were hoping for. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics. While this place got dinged a bit for its nursing hours, it excelled in some of these quality-based metrics. With less than five percent of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, it performed well in this statistic. This is typically an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by having a system of moving a patient at least once a day.

Moving on to the last category, this nursing home received a grade of C for short-term care, which is generally a decent score. In the category of short-term care, we endeavor to qualify measures of a facility's rehabilitation services. We assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most nursing homes, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.