Meadowlark Hills

In addition to a phenomenal overall grade, this facility also received A+ nursing grade. Nursing ratings are heavily correlated with quality and quantity of nursing care. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This nursing home also was given a top-shelf long-term care grade. Indeed, this ended up being this nursing home's second strongest category score. In that area, we gave this facility a score of A. When facilities receive a grade in this range in this category it generally means it has plenty of staff and is an overall good place to live on a permanent basis. In addition to assessing the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 99.54955 percent of its residents, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia tragically can be a life threatening ailment for nursing home residents so we prefer when a facility doesn't take any chances. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

We also want to draw your attention to the fact that this facility was given an elite score of A in our short-term care area. In our short-term care grade, we try to forge a fair measure for rehabilitation services. In doing so, we assess the facility's level of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final item we looked at in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return home. We found that 5.7 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

Turning to our inspection category, this nursing home excelled in that area, which is based on the nursing home's recent government inspection reports. We awarded it an A for that category. This finished off this place's straight A report card. Inspection ratings weigh a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher scores in this category typically have very few severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.