Mcalester Nursing & Rehab

In addition to receiving a strong overall score, this nursing home fared even better in our inspections category which is associated with the nursing home's recent inspections. We gave it an A+ for that category, which is one of our highest grades. These inspection ratings weigh several factors, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these items by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This place was hit with 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe deficiencies. This tells you that CMS did not consider any of these deficiencies to be an immediate threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home performed well in our long-term care category. As a result, we gave it a grade of A for that category, which turns out to be one of our higher scores. Long-term care grades of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is much higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.03 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Turning to the area of nursing care, this was not one of this facility's strong suits. We awarded it a grade of D in this category. Clearly, this facility performed much better in the categories discussed above. The nursing grade includes a host of subcategories. The most heavily weighted factor is the quantity of hours nurses spend with patients. This facility offered just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing ratings. This place performed well in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these datapoints to be measures of the quality of nursing care.

Turning to our next area, we gave this facility a grade of D for short-term care. This is the facility's weakest category grade. Of course, this score pulled down the nursing home's overall profile to some degree. In our short-term care score, we endeavor to forge a valuable barometer for rehabilitation. In this process, we analyze a facility's level of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. Unfortunately, we found that this nursing home provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. Lastly, we assessed the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that just 4.9 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.