Northern Montana Care Center

On top of being a first rate nursing home overall, this nursing home also performed well in our inspections category, where it received an A+. Very few facilities performed this well in this category. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining these inspection grades. One critical factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies can be quite minor. This nursing home received 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This means that CMS did not deem any of these deficiencies to pose an imminent threat to resident health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This high end facility also excelled in the category of short-term care, where we gave it a grade of A+. Very few nursing homes fared better in this area. In the area of short-term care, we attempt to assess indicators of a facility's rehabilitation. We analyze a facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses and various therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last metric we looked at in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that 5.9 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.

This nursing home also was awarded a high-end long-term care score. In fact, this turned out to be this nursing home's third strongest category grade. In that area, we gave this facility a grade of A-. Nursing homes that do well in this category typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to residents. After we finished looking at the amount of nursing care, we then looked at the facility's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 98.59155 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia can be a life threatening illness for nursing home patients so we like it when a facility doesn't leave this to chance. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

The final category we rated is nursing, where this nursing home received a grade of A-. This completed a very impressive report card. Very few nursing homes earned an A- or better in each of our categories. Our nursing rating is based on the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We look at both the levels of training of the nurses as well as the number of hours spent with residents. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.