Medilodge of Marshall

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A for our short-term care grade. In calculating these short-term care ratings, we analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The purpose is to create a tool for comparing the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 6.1 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

This facility also excelled in the area of inspections. We awarded it an B+ for that category, which is one of our highest grades. This is one of the few nursing homes with an overall score in this range which received multiple category grades this high. Perhaps the most significant factor we consider in computing our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Places with higher grades in this area most likely avoided the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. Although this facility had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were major deficiencies based on CMS' scale. A couple relatively minor dings are not the end of the world.

Adding to its profile, this facility also earned a grade of B+ for its nursing rating. This is a well above average score in this category. Nursing ratings are mostly associated with a nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility 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 often be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Moving on to our next area, this facility didn't perform very well. Due to a poor grade of F in that category, this was obviously this nursing home's weakest category grade. In a long-term care environment, the facility's primary objective is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. Thankfully, this nursing home gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is a very solid percentage. To our surprise, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this nursing home had fewer hospitalizations than many nursing homes. Unfortunately, some of its other scores in the category weren't as favorable as these.