Pioneer Memorial Community Hospital

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A for our inspections rating. Perhaps the most important factor we consider in calculating our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Places with higher scores in this category most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. This place was hit with 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe. This means that CMS did not consider any of these deficiencies to cause an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its strong resume, this facility also received an excellent nursing score, with a grade of A. In calculating a facility's nursing grade, we weigh the amount of time nurses commit to patients as well as the skill levels of those nurses. 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 nursing home 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 typically be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Compounding its first-rate assessment, this facility also was awarded an excellent short-term care score, with a grade of A-. Our short-term care grade is commonly used to grade a facility's performance with rehabilitation To provide good rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to provide higher levels of highly skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the number of residents that eventually returned home from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

In the last area, this facility also was given an impressive long-term care grade, with a grade of B+. This topped off a very strong profile. Long-term care scores in this range generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. On top of considering the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 97.75281 percent of its patients, which is very impressive. Pneumonia sadly is often a life threatening health condition for nursing home patients so we strongly prefer when a facility does not take any chances. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.