Ozark Mountain Regional Healthcare Center

While we didn't give this place a good overall score, we did give it a strong grade in the category of inspections, where it received a grade of B+. Our inspection ratings are tied to pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Deficiencies are a key thing to look for on these inspections. Most importantly, you should avoid nursing homes that have severe deficiencies linked to risks to resident well being. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G through L. This means that the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A few minor deficiencies are not the end of the world.

We also awarded this facility a grade of B- for our nursing rating. There are a variety of criteria within this grade. Most of the subcategories reflect the quantity of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this place actually excelled in some of the quality-based metrics we assessed. In fact, it performed well in the area of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. Many consider these areas to be good measures of the quality of nursing care. In many cases, the quality of nursing care is as important as the quantity of hours of care provided.

Moving on to the category of long-term care, this facility was awarded just a D in this area. Facilities that receive this kind of score in this category likely don't provide the type of consistent 24/7 care that some other nursing homes offer. One of the statistics we considered after nurse's aid hours was vaccinations. Frankly, we were a bit worried that this facility administered the pneumonia vaccine to a relatively low 62.055332 percent of its patients. Surprisingly, this facility actually fared well at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had just 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. This was its best score in this category.

The final category we scored was short-term care. This nursing home received a bottom of the barrel grade of F in that area. Our short-term care scores are critical for individuals requiring rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally requires more skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes a wide range of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Not surprisingly, we found that this nursing home provides substantially less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per patient than the typical nursing home. Finally, we assessed the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. This definitely was not a strength for this facility. We found that just 3.4 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home. At most facilities, around half of their residents are able to return home so this is well below average.