Memorial Community Care

We also found that this nursing home excelled in our long-term care rating. We gave them an impressive grade of A+ in this area. Long-term care scores in this range generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. One of the statistics we considered after nursing hours was vaccinations. This facility provided the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. This is a proven method to minimize negative health outcomes for the nursing home population. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

In addition, this facility also received a nearly flawless government inspection report. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with an A. Perhaps the most important factor we look at in calculating our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Facilities with better scores in this area most likely dodged the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its impressive resume, this nursing home also excelled in our nursing category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A- for that category. Our nursing rating is based on a handful of datapoints, however, the main consideration is the quantity of nurse hours spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this place 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 Nebraska in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of turning residents more frequently.

The next category we looked at is short-term care, in which this nursing home received a B-. Although this proved to be its worst category rating, this is still not the end of the world. In computing these short-term care ratings, we look at the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our objective is to formulate a barometer for comparing the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final datapoint we looked at in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is actually below average.