Rocky Mountain Care Center

While this facility's overall grade was not bad, it really excelled in the category of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A+ for that category, which is one of our best scores. Inspection ratings account for several factors found on a facility's inspection report. One key criteria we consider is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher grades in this area tend to have few severe deficiencies. While this place had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This tells you CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A couple relatively minor dings aren't something to panic about.

This nursing home was awarded its second most favorable category grade in the category of short-term care. We awarded this nursing home a B- in this area, which is an acceptable grade. Short-term care grades are often employed to grade a facility's performance with rehabilitation. In order to provide highly graded rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to offer better levels of skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other types of therapists. Unfortunately, it does not look like this nursing home provided information about its staffing of registered nurses or physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 5.2 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most facilities, closer to half of their patients are able to return home so this figure is below average.

One of this facility's better category grades was in the area of nursing care. In that area, we gave this facility a grade of B-. There are a variety of datapoints within this grade. Many of the factors reflect staffing levels. This facility provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident each day. This is a low total compared with most other facilities. Finally, nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours per resident, this place actually performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is often a good indicator that a facility has quality controls in place. Some falls can be avoided if a facility supplies enough nurses aids to assist its residents.

The last category we scored is long-term care, was this facility's least impressive area. We gave this facility a D in that area. This was one of just a few weak links of a quality profile. Nursing homes that receive this type of score in long-term care may not provide the type of consistent around the clock care that some other facilities provide. In addition to considering the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 92.15687 percent of its patients, which is a bit less than we expected. To our surprise, this facility was actually decent at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. This was its best score in this category.