Seward Mountain Haven

In addition to receiving a great overall score, this facility also received an elite nursing score. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with an A. There are several datapoints included in this category. Many of the subcategories relate to staffing levels. This nursing home provides 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Adding to its profile, 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 ratings, we quantify the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The purpose is to devise a scale for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last statistic we considered in this area is the percentage of patients that who were able to eventually return home from the facility. 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.

In addition, this facility also received first-rate inspections in recent years. We gave them one of our better scores in that area, with an impressive grade of B+. Perhaps the most significant factor we consider in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities with better grades in this area typically avoided the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. While this facility had a few deficiencies on its inspection report, none were major deficiencies based on CMS' scale. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in this industry.

The next area we graded is long-term care. We awarded this facility a grade of D in long-term care, leaving this as its least impressive category grade. Facilities that do not fare well in long-term care often do not provide as much nursing care and also may be lagging in a few of the areas of routine personal care we assessed. In addition to considering the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. We found that this nursing home vaccinated only 69.78417 percent of its residents, which is several points lower than we expected. To our surprise, this facility actually fared well at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. This is its best score in this category.