Stilwell Nursing Home

While this nursing home's overall grade was decent, it really fared well in the area of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A- for that category, which is one of our best scores. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating these inspection ratings. One of those factors is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies can be quite insignificant. While this place had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This means that 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 minor deficiencies should not stop you from considering a nursing home.

This facility also was awarded an impressive grade in our long-term care category. We awarded this nursing home an above average grade of B in this category. Facilities that receive this type of grade in long-term care typically provide consistent around the clock care to ensure residents are kept in good health. Once we assessed the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 97.0339 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Next, we looked at the nursing category where we awarded this nursing home a grade of C, which is a decent grade. In determining our nursing grades, we factor in both nursing hours and the training levels of the nurses. This place provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient per day. This is a relatively low total compared with most nursing homes. Lastly, despite not having the highest total nursing hours, this place performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is often a reliable indicator that a place has sufficient quality controls in place.

The last category we graded was short-term care, which turned out to be this nursing home's weakest category. We gave this nursing home a grade of D in that area. In crafting these short-term care scores, we look at the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our purpose is to formulate a tool for comparing the rehabilitation services of different facilities. Considering its grade in this area, we were not surprised to discover that this nursing home is well below average in terms of the number of physical therapy and registered nurse hours offered to its patients based on the metrics we assessed. Frankly, this was about what we expected here. Lastly, we looked at the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that just 4.9 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.