Missoula Health & Rehabilitation Center

To pair with its strong overall grade, we gave this facility an A+ for our inspections rating. Inspection ratings account for a host of factors included in a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better grades in this area typically have few of these severe deficiencies. Although this nursing home had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were serious based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Among the reasons we rated this facility so highly is that it received a dominant long-term care score. In fact, long-term care ended up being its second most favorable category score. In that category, we awarded this facility a score of A-. For long-term care residents, the nursing home's primary objective is to maintain patients' quality of life and keep them safe. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 84.375 percent of its patients, which is a bit less than we anticipated. Although its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we had hoped, we were pleased to find facility was able to limit hospitalizations. With just 1.22 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this nursing home has less hospitalizations than many nursing homes.

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. The nursing score assesses quite a few subcategories, however, the paramount one is the level of nurse hours spent with patients. This nursing home provides 3.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures 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 nursing home Montana 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 having a system of moving a patient more often.

The next category we rated was short-term care, in which this nursing home received a grade of C. This was this nursing home's worst category. This is nevertheless not a bad grade. Our short-term care grades are meaningful for patients looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally utilizes higher levels of skilled nursing. This means a broad range of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other types of therapy. This facility provides more services with physical therapists and registered nurses than most facilities we looked at. This is typically a great sign. Lastly, we considered the number of patients who returned home from this nursing home. We found that 36.8 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was actually below the national average.