Towner County Living Center

We also wanted to point out the fact that this nursing home has received excellent inspections in recent years. We gave them an impressive grade of A in this area. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing our inspection scores. One key factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being relatively minor. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the inspectors did not deem 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.

Contributing to its first-rate resume, this facility also received a dominant long-term care grade, with a grade of A. When nursing homes receive a grade in this range in this category it typically means it's well-staffed and is an overall good place to reside on a permanent basis. Once we looked at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is far higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This facility also excelled in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of A. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. Nursing grades are heavily correlated with quality and quantity of nursing care. This facility provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of turning residents more frequently.

In the last category, this nursing home also received an impressive short-term care score, with a grade of A-. This completed a very impressive profile. Our short-term care scores are vital for people looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually requires additional skilled nursing. This means a wide spectrum of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last metric we looked at in this area is the number of patients that were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.