Northern Montana Care Center

In addition to receiving a strong overall grade, this nursing home received an A+ inspection grade. This score is based on its recent inspection reports. An A+ in this area is one of the best complements we can pay to a facility. Our inspection grades are tied to datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that score well in this category tend to have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This means that the government inspectors did not 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.

To add to its strong achievements in other areas, we awarded this facility a score of A- for its short-term care score. In the category of short-term care, we endeavor to evaluate measures of a facility's rehabilitation services. We assess a nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses and physical and occupational therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last datapoint we looked at in this area is the percentage of residents that ultimately were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that 4.5 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

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 96.86275 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 B+. This completed a very impressive report card. Very few nursing homes earned a B+ 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, we also factored a few quality measures into our nursing grades. This nursing home was relatively weak in two of the major areas we focus on, with below average scores for minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. These areas are generally reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care provided.