Pontotoc Health & Rehab Center

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. Inspection scores account for a host of factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with better scores in this category typically have very few severe deficiencies. While this facility had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe made us feel better about this inspection report.

One of the other reasons we rated this nursing home so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing rating. In fact, nursing turned out to be its second best category grade. In that category, we gave this facility an A-. Our nursing rating looks at the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We weigh both the levels of skill of the nurses and the number of hours spent with residents. 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 facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can typically be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Turning to the next category, this nursing home also received a grade of B for its short-term care rating. This is a well above average score in this category. In determining our short-term care scores, we assess the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The objective is to formulate a tool for comparing the rehabilitation services of various facilities. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final statistic we looked at in this area is the number of patients that who were able to eventually return home from the facility. We found that 5.1 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

Turning to the fourth area, this facility was awarded a decent long-term care rating. Even though this was not nearly as impressive as a few of its other category grades, this is still not a terrible score. Long-term care scores are crucial for individuals requiring personal care. After assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination statistics. We were optimistic to learn that this nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia. This place was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.