Sarcoxie Nursing Center

On top of receiving a strong overall rating, this facility fared even better in the area of inspections which is based on the nursing home's recent inspections. We gave it an A+ for this area, which is one of our highest grades. Arguably the most significant factor we consider in calculating our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Places with better grades in this category most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. While this nursing home had some minor dings on its report, it had zero 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 safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

One of the other reasons we graded this nursing home so highly is that it was given a very impressive long-term care score. Indeed, long-term care turned out to be its second best category grade. In that area, we gave this facility a grade of A. When nursing homes receive this kind of grade in long-term care it is usually a good sign for patient care and indicates that the place is well-staffed with nurses and aids. After we finished looking at the volume of care provided by nurses, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 99.11504 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is very impressive. Pneumonia is often a deadly ailment for nursing home patients so we strongly prefer when a facility does not leave its residents vulnerable. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.03 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This facilities third best area was short-term care. We awarded it a grade of C in this category. This is basically a slightly below average grade in this category. With our short-term care rating, we try to craft a meaningful barometer for rehabilitation services. In doing so, we look at a nursing home's level of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. Unfortunately, it does not appear that this facility submitted registered nurse or physical therapist staffing data. The last metric we considered in this category is the number of residents that ultimately returned home from the nursing home. We found that just 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

This nursing home's least impressive area was nursing, which is the last category we scored. In this category, we awarded this facility a grade of just D. There are a variety of factors within this category. Many of these criteria are tied to staffing levels. This nursing home averaged only 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This is a very low total compared to most nursing homes. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in computing our nursing grades. This place fared well in the area of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. Many consider these metrics to be good measures of the quality of nursing care.