Ozark Rehabilitation & Health Care Center

While this nursing home's overall grade was not bad, it really fared well in the category of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A- for that category, which is one of our highest scores. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining these inspection ratings. One critical factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies are relatively insignificant. While this place had some deficiencies on its report, none were major deficiencies based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is always a good sign.

We also gave this facility an impressive grade in long-term care. This nursing home earned a grade of B in this category, which is one of our higher scores. When nursing homes receive this type of grade in long-term care it is usually a good sign for patient care and indicates that the facility is well-staffed with nurses and aids. After looking at the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents healthy. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This facility's third most favorable category was short-term care. In that category, we gave this facility a grade of C. Our short-term care ratings are important for people seeking rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically utilizes higher levels of skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes a vast range of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Unfortunately, this facility was below average in terms of its number of registered nurse and physical therapy hours provided to its patients based on the metrics we assessed. The final datapoint we assessed in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We discovered that just 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is below average.

The next category we graded was nursing, which ended up being this nursing home's worst category. Sadly, it received an F in this category, which is certainly a major disappointment. In computing a nursing home's nursing grade, we assess the quantity of hours nurses are caring for patients as well as the skill levels of the nurses. With a meager 0.2 hours of nursing care per patient daily, this nursing home's nurse staffing levels were quite a bit below average. This facility also had abysmal marks in some of the quality-based measures to go along with its low nursing hour totals. For starters, we looked at the percent of residents experiencing pressure ulcers. This nursing home was at more than twice the national average in this statistic. This is quite concerning when you consider that many bed sores are believed to be preventable with better nursing care. This ended up sealing the facility's fate of earning a very poor nursing score.