Nhc Healthcare, Kennett

In addition to receiving a strong overall rating, this nursing home received an A+ inspection rating. This grade is based on its recent government inspections. An A+ in this area is one of the highest complements we can pay to a nursing home. Our inspection scores are based on many items located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that excel in this area tend to have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these places generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. While 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 tells you that CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A couple relatively minor dings are not necessarily the end of the world.

On the list of its many high-end scores, this facility was awarded a strong short-term care score. In fact, we gave it a score of A- in that area. In computing our short-term care scores, we look at the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The objective is to create a measure for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes 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. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of patients who eventually returned home from this nursing home. We found that 5.4 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

Additionally, this nursing home also was awarded favorable long-term care grades in our assessment. In fact, we gave them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B+. When facilities receive this type of grade in this category it is typically a good sign for resident care and indicates that the nursing home is well-staffed with nurses aids. On top of looking at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients healthy. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The final category we graded is nursing, where this nursing home was awarded a grade of B-. This actually turned out to be this nursing home's worst category. This is still not a poor grade. In computing a facility's nursing score, we weigh the number of hours nurses spend with patients and the levels of training of the nurses. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Finally, our nursing scores also consider some quality-focused statistics. We especially look at the percent of residents who suffered pressure ulcers and major falls. These metrics are decent measures of the quality of nursing care, since better care can reduce these issues.