Ozark Nursing Home

To pair with its strong overall grade, we gave this nursing home an A- for our long-term care grade. Facilities that do well in this category typically are well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to residents. On top of looking at the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 99.044586 percent of its residents, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia can be a life or death ailment for nursing home residents so we prefer when a nursing home doesn't take any chances. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

In addition, this facility also performed well in our inspection category, which is based on its recent inspections. In fact, we awarded it an B+ for that area. Our inspection ratings weigh a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with better grades in this category generally have few of these severe deficiencies. This place was assessed 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This tells you that the government inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies to create an imminent threat to patient health or safety. We should point out that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in this industry.

This facility is also strong in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of B. It outperformed most nursing homes in this category. The nursing grade includes many subcategories, many of which are based on quantities of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The last category we looked at was short-term care, where we gave it a favorable grade of B. This nursing home really does not have any weak links. Short-term care grades are generally employed to assess a facility's rehabilitation services. To provide high-end rehabilitation services, facilities generally must have higher levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other highly skilled individuals. Unfortunately, we weren't able to find information about this nursing home's registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. The last statistic we looked at in this area is the percentage of residents who returned home from the nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.