Montana Veterans Home Nursing Home

Although we did not rate this facility well overall, we want to point out its decent government inspections in recent years. We gave it a relatively respectable grade of B- in that category. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing these inspection scores. One key factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these can be relatively minor. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, CMS cited this nursing home for possible abuse or neglect. Hopefully, its performance improves in the future, but until then we simply can't recommend this facility.

We also want to point out that this facility received a decent grade in our nursing category. We awarded it a grade of B- in the area. Nursing ratings are primarily associated with the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This place provides only 0.7 hours of nursing care per patient per day. This is a somewhat discouraging figure which is well below average. Finally, nursing grades also consider quality-based measures, such as avoiding major falls. Despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours per resident, this place actually performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is often a good indicator that a place has sufficient quality controls in place. Some falls could be avoided if a facility supplies enough nurses to assist its residents.

The third category we analyzed was short-term care, where this facility received a B- in this category. In calculating these short-term care ratings, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The objective is to devise a tool for comparing the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. Unfortunately, this facility was below average in terms of its quantity of registered nurse and physical therapy hours provided to its residents based on the measures we assessed. The final item we assessed in this category is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We discovered that just 0 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is actually below average.

The last area we rated was long-term care. We awarded it a grade of B- in that category. This is not a bad grade in this area. In the area of long-term care, we weigh the amount of services provided by a nursing home, rather than more healthcare-oriented services. After we finished looking at the volume of care provided by nurses, we next considered the facility's vaccination statistics. We were optimistic to find that this nursing home vaccinates 98.67841 percent of its residents for pneumonia. Lastly, this facility was also able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.