Medilodge of Clare

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-. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining our inspection scores. One of those factors is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some of these end up being relatively insignificant. This particular nursing home received 4 deficiencies on its inspection report. Overall, this is still a good inspection report, but we'd always recommend looking into any deficiencies you find troubling.

Among the reasons we rated this nursing home so well is that it received a dominant short-term care grade. Indeed, short-term care is its second most favorable category score. In that category, we gave this facility a grade of A-. Our short-term care grade is generally used to measure a facility's rehabilitation services. To have good rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to offer better levels of highly skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other licensed professionals. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last statistic we assessed in this category is the number of residents who eventually returned home from the nursing home. We found that 5.4 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

Another strong feature for this facility is that it received an impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of B+. The nursing grade is based on numerous datapoints. The most important variable is the number of hours nurses spend with residents. This nursing home provides 0.4 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 nursing home the country 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 having a protocol of moving a resident at least once a day.

Moving on to the last category, we gave this facility a D in long-term care. This was the nursing home's worst category grade. However, you shouldn't over-emphasize one poor score. For patients looking for a permanent residence rather than rehabilitation, long-term care is an important category. After we finished assessing the amount of nursing care, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination record. We were optimistic to find that this facility vaccinated 98.12206 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Surprisingly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this nursing home had less hospitalizations than many nursing homes. Unfortunately, some of its other scores in the category weren't as favorable as these.