Medicalodges Independence

In addition to performing well in its overall grade, this facility performed at an even higher level in the area of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A-. Perhaps the most important factor we consider in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Places with better scores in this category typically dodged the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G through L. This tells you that CMS didn't consider 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.

This nursing home really excelled in the category of long-term care, where it received a score of A-. Only a select group of facilities performed more favorably in this area. For residents in need of a permanent residence rather than rehabilitation, long-term care is a very important category. Once we finished looking at the quantity of nursing care, we next considered the facility's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 13.281251 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Fortunately, this nursing home was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had just 1.16 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a significantly better hospitalization rate than most nursing homes.

This facility is also strong in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of B+. It outperformed most nursing homes in this category. When calculating a nursing home's nursing score, we weigh the amount of time nurses spend with patients as well as the level of licensure of those nurses. This particular nursing home provided 3.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by having a protocol of turning a resident even once per day.

The last category we looked at ended up being this facility's weakest area. Nevertheless, even in its weakest link we still gave it a respectable grade of B- in our short-term care category. In the area of short-term care, we seek to evaluate indicators of a nursing home's rehabilitation. We assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. This nursing home elevated its grade in this category by offering more care from registered nurses to its residents than the average facility. The last datapoint we looked at in this area is the percentage of patients that ultimately were able to return home from the facility. It performed better than most nursing homes in this area with 51.8 percent of its patients returning home. With most facilities, less than half of their short-term residents are able to return home.