Prairie Manor Nursing Home

This nursing home earned a solid overall grade as described above, but we really wanted to point out its nearly flawless government inspections in recent years. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. These inspection ratings take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these items by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. We should point out that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in this industry.

This nursing home also was awarded a strong long-term care score. In fact, we awarded it a B+ in this category, which happens to be one of our better. Nursing homes that do well in this category tend to be well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to residents. Once we looked at the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents healthy. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Another strength of this facility is its favorable grade in nursing. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with an impressive grade of D. The nursing rating features many subcategories. The most heavily weighted variable is the number of hours nurses spent with patients. This facility provided just 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing ratings. This place fared well when it comes to minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls.

The final area we analyzed is short-term care, which is this facility's weakest category. Sadly, it received an abysmal F for this area, which is clearly concerning. Our short-term care scores are considered to be more critical for individuals in need of a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually utilizes more highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes not merely nursing, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. It looks like this facility was subpar in many staffing metrics we focus on. It supplied fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most other nursing homes. Finally, we considered the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. This was not a strength for this nursing home. We found that just 3.8 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home. At most facilities, about half of their patients are able to return home so this is well below average.