Mountains Community Hospital Distinct Part Skilled Nursing

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it received an A+ long-term care grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. Facilities that receive this type of score in long-term care typically provide consistent around the clock care to make sure residents are well cared for. On top of considering the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia is often a life or death health condition for nursing home residents so we like it when a facility does not leave its residents vulnerable. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This nursing home also received a very impressive nursing grade. In fact, this turned out to be its second best category grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A. Nursing grades are largely based on a facility's nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics 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 place the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a system of moving a patient at least once a day.

This facility has received near flawless health inspections in recent years. We awarded them an impressive grade of A- in this category. Our inspection ratings are tied to many datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that score well in this category typically have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. While this place had some deficiencies on its inspection report, none of them were major deficiencies based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Turning to the fourth area, this facility also performed admirably in our short-term care category. In fact, we gave it a grade of B+ in that category. This completed a very impressive report card. In computing our short-term care grades, we look at the facility's levels of skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. This area is more often than not a solid measure of the nursing home's rehabilitation services. Unfortunately, we were not able to track down information on registered nurse or physical therapy staffing for this nursing home. Lastly, we considered the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home.