Rural Health Care Center

While this place's overall grade was terrible, it actually didn't perform quite as poorly in the area of long-term care. We awarded it a B- for that category, which isn't bad. Unfortunately, this was not enough to spare its otherwise weak profile. Long-term care grades are typically used to grade a nursing home's performance as a traditional convalescent home, as opposed to focusing more on the skilled nursing services provided by a skilled nursing facility. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. As it turns out, this facility administered the vaccine to a relatively low 32.7044 percent of its patients, which is a bit of a concern. Nevertheless, this nursing home was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

One of the other reasons we rated this nursing home so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing rating. In that category, we awarded this nursing home an C. Our nursing score is largely associated with the nursing home's nurse staffing. This particular facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This figure is significantly below the national average. Lastly, although this facility got dinged a bit for its nursing hours, it actually excelled in some of our quality-based metrics. With fewer than five percent of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, it did well in this subcategory.

Unfortunately, this nursing home only earned a D for its short-term care score, which is not a score to write home about. In calculating our short-term care grades, we analyze the facility's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other types of therapists. This category is frequently a solid assessment of the facility's rehabilitation services. Not surprisingly, we found that this nursing home provides far less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. The last statistic we considered in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that just 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these subpar statistics was damning for this nursing home's short-term care score.

In the last category of inspections, this ended up being this facility's weakest link. Inspection grades are based on a facility's recent inspections. We gave this nursing home a score of D in this category, which is a very weak grade. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining our inspection scores. One of those factors is deficiencies. We suggest you scrutinize the level of severity of those deficiencies. This facility was hit with 9 deficiencies by government inspectors. The only favorable thing we found is that none of these deficiencies were in the categories that suggest that they posed a risk to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility was cited by CMS for possible abuse or neglect. We would not recommend this facility under any circumstance.