Southbrook Healthcare

On top of being a first rate nursing home overall, this place also excelled in inspections, where it earned an A. Not many nursing homes performed better in this area. Our inspection scores weigh several factors included in a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better scores in this category generally have few of these severe deficiencies. While this facility had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. We should point out that deficiency-free inspections are rare in this industry.

We also want to draw your attention to the fact that this facility was given a high-end score of A- in our short-term care area. Short-term care grades are important for patients in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally utilizes more skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means a broad range of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last datapoint we considered in this area is the percentage of patients that returned home from the nursing home. This was more of a strength for this facility. It performed as well as just about any facility in Oklahoma in this area with 69.6 percent of its residents returning home. Unfortunately, at most nursing homes, fewer than half of their short-term residents return home.

Adding to its impressive resume, this nursing home also excelled in our nursing category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A- for that category. Our nursing grade consists of several factors, most of which are tied to nursing hours. This nursing home provides 3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well in the area of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

In the last area, we gave this facility an A for our long-term care rating. This finished off a very strong report card. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in long-term care it generally means it has plenty of staff and is an overall good place to live on a permanent basis. After considering the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is much higher than the majority of nursing homes. This place also keeps its residents out of the hospital. Although it had 2.48 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, its risk adjusted metric was better than most facilities since it had more complex patients.