Mitchell County Nursing and Rehabilitation Center

To go along with its relatively modest overall grade, we gave this facility an A- for our inspections rating. This is far more impressive than its overall score. Arguably the most critical factor we consider in calculating our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Facilities with higher grades in this area most likely dodged the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This place was hit with 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered to be major deficiencies. This tells you that the inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies to cause an immediate risk to patient safety or health. A couple of minor deficiencies shouldn't lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

Another one of this nursing home's more favorable category grades was in the category of long-term care. In that category, we gave this nursing home a B. It actually fared better than most facilities in this area. When nursing homes receive this kind of score in this category it is a good sign for patient care and indicates that the place is well-staffed with nurses and aids. Once we finished looking at the amount of care provided by nurses, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 99.45652 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia is often a dangerous illness for nursing home patients so we strongly prefer when a facility does not leave its residents vulnerable. This facility was also able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had only 1.65 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days.

We awarded this facility a grade of just D for our short-term care rating. This is not a score to write home about. In the category of short-term care, we strive to evaluate measures of a nursing home's rehabilitation. We assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. With a grade of this caliber in this category, we were not stunned to discover that this place was below average in the two key staffing metrics we looked at. In fact, it provided substantially fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most other nursing homes. The final measure we looked at in this area is the number of residents that eventually returned home from the nursing home. This facility struggled quite a bit in this area as well, with just 0 percent of its patients returning home. This was well below the national average.

The final category we rated is nursing, which turned out to be a low point for this nursing home. We gave this nursing home a D in our nursing category. When determining our nursing grades, we analyze both the number of hours nurses spend with residents and the skill levels of those nurses. This nursing home averages 3.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day, which is below the national average. To pair with its subpar totals in the area of nursing hours per resident, this place also did not fare as well in the quality-based measures we looked at in calculating our nursing grades. We looked at the percentage of patients experiencing pressure ulcers and major falls. This place had more pressure ulcers and falls than the average nursing home. This may be a bad sign when you consider that many bed sores and falls are believed to be preventable with better nursing care. Unfortunately, these statistics pulled down this nursing home's nursing rating quite a bit.