Medicalodges Independence

This facility received a quality overall grade as described above, but we especially would like to point out its nearly flawless government inspections in recent years. We gave it an impressive grade of A- in this area. Inspection scores are based on many pieces of information found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that excel in this category tend to have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these places generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. Although this nursing home had a few deficiencies on its inspection report, none were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. A few relatively minor deficiencies aren't the end of the world.

An additional strong feature for this facility is that it was given an impressive long-term care grade. In fact, this ended up being its second best category score. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of B+. For prospective patients in need of a permanent residence rather than skilled nursing, long-term care grades are very important. After considering the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 15.254237 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which happens to be a few points less than we expected but still a respectable figure. Although its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we hoped for, we were pleased to find place was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Another one of this facility's impressive category grades came in the area of nursing care. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B. When calculating our nursing grades, we look at both staffing levels and the skill levels of those nurses. This particular nursing home provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place Kansas in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as employing a policy of moving residents at least once a day.

The last category we assessed is short-term care. This nursing home was given a C in this category. Short-term care ratings are critical for individuals in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually mandates additional highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes a broad scope of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. It does not look like this facility submitted information on registered nurse or physical therapist staffing. Lastly, we looked at the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 5.1 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most facilities, closer to half of their patients are able to return home so this figure is below average.