The Living Centre

With an address in Stevensville, Montana, The Living Centre is the lone nursing home located in the area. After receiving an A overall grade, this nursing home has the prestigious distinction of being one of the 25 best facilities in Montana. In our view, this facility ought to be a no brainer for most people. Headlining this place's exemplary report card is its inspection grade, which we will address in the next paragraph.

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. Perhaps the most critical factor we consider in computing our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places with better scores in this category most likely dodged the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. This nursing home was assessed 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered to be severe. This tells you that the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies to be an immediate threat to resident safety or health. Remember that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in the industry.

One of the other reasons we graded this facility so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing score. Nursing turned out to be its second best category grade. In that category, we awarded this facility a grade of A+. There are a host of subcategories within this grade. Many of the datapoints are tied to levels of nurse staffing. This nursing home provided 5 hours of nursing care per patient each day, which is among the highest figures in the country. A significant percentage of those hours were provided by registered nurses, which are one of the more skilled levels of nurses. We were really impressed by these figures. On top of providing impressive levels of nursing care, this facility also performed well in several of the quality measures we looked at. By way of illustration, in terms of the percentage of its patients suffering falls resulting in major injury, this place performed as well as any facility the state. Preventing major falls is generally an indicator that a nursing home has quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be prevented if more nurses and better safety protocols are in place.

We also gave this nursing home a grade of of A+ for its short-term care grade. In computing these short-term care ratings, we look at the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The objective is to create a measure for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. This nursing home offered more registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most facilities. Lastly, we looked at the number of residents who ultimately were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that it fared better than most nursing homes in the country in this area with 55.7 percent of its residents able to return home.

The last category we rated is long-term care, in which this facility was given a B. Believe it or not, this turned out to be this facility's weakest category. A facility could be doing a lot worse when their weakest grade still rates higher than most other facilities. Facilities that receive this kind of grade in this category typically provide consistent 24/7 care to ensure residents are well cared for. After considering the significant amount of nursing hours and other staffing provided by this facility, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 99.25926 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is far higher than most nursing homes. Lastly, we looked at its number of hospitalizations. We found that this place had 2.28 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days.