Sunset Manor Avera Health

We also wanted to emphasize that this nursing home has received near flawless government inspections in recent years. We gave them an impressive grade of A+ in this area. Arguably the most significant factor we look at in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Places with better scores in this category most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also was awarded a high-end long-term care grade. Indeed, this turned out to be this facility's second strongest category grade. In that area, this facility received a grade of A. When nursing homes receive a grade in this range in long-term care it generally means it's well-staffed and is an overall good place to reside on a permanent basis. In addition to looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 98.08613 percent of its patients, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia tragically can be a life or death condition for nursing home residents so we like it when a nursing home doesn't leave its residents vulnerable. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Additionally, this nursing home also was given favorable short-term care scores in our assessment. Indeed, we gave it one of our higher grades in that category, with a score of B. In determining our short-term care grades, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The objective is to create a measure for comparing the rehabilitation services of different facilities. Unfortunately, it does not appear that this facility submitted data regarding its registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. The last datapoint we looked at in this area is the percentage of residents who eventually returned home from the nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

Turning to our next area, this facility received an acceptable nursing rating. Although this wasn't as good as some of its other grades, this is really not a terrible score. When determining a facility's nursing rating, we assess the amount of time nurses spend with residents as well as the skill levels of those nurses. This facility provided just 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Finally, we also baked a few quality measures into our nursing scores. This place was subpar in a few of the major metrics we look at, with below average scores for minimizing its patients' major falls and pressure ulcers. These areas are generally reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care available.