Northern Montana Care Center

In addition to being a great facility overall, it also received A+ health inspections recently. Its inspections are virtually perfect. Our inspection grades are tied to datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that score well in this area have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these facilities should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G through L. This means that the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

On the list of its many high-end grades, this facility received a strong short-term care grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of A in that area. Short-term care ratings are important for residents in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually utilizes more highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes a broad spectrum of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 5.9 percent of this nursing home's residents returned 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 97.095436 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.