Saratoga Care Center

Saratoga Care Center is a small facility located in Saratoga, Wyoming. Sporting an overall grade of A, this facility is one of the most elite nursing homes we looked at. We were so impressed with this facility that we rated it as one of the 25 best facilities in Wyoming. Headlining this place's exemplary profile is its nursing rating, which you can find in the next section.

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for its nursing grade. Nursing ratings are tied to quality and quantity of nursing care. This nursing home provides 3.5 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 place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can many times be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Contributing to its high-end resume, this facility also received a strong short-term care score, with a score of A-. In the category of short-term care, we seek to qualify measures of a facility's rehabilitation services. We assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. This nursing home provides more services with physical therapists and registered nurses than most nursing homes we looked at. The last item we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients that were able to return home from the facility. We found that it performed better than most facilities in this area with 49.4 percent of its patients returning home. Unfortunately, at most nursing homes, fewer than half of their short-term residents are able to return home.

Adding to this facility's impressive resume, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A- for our inspections rating. Inspection ratings are tied to several items located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that excel in this category typically have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these facilities should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. While this nursing home had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspections are rare in the industry.

Moving on to our last area, this facility also performed admirably in our long-term care category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of B+ for that area. This completed a first-rate profile. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in long-term care it generally means it's well-staffed and is a quality place to live on a permanent basis. Once we looked at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 96.7033 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is better than the vast majority of nursing homes. This facility also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had only 1.61 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days.