Uintah Health Care Special Service District

In addition to a phenomenal overall grade, this facility also received A+ nursing grade. Our nursing grade looks at the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We look at both the levels of licensure of those nurses as well as the number of hours spent with patients. This nursing home averages 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at 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 place the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as employing a system of turning residents more frequently.

An additional reason we assessed this facility so favorably is that it was given an A+ short-term care grade. This is just about as elite as it gets in this area. In forming these short-term care grades, we look at the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our objective is to devise a scale for comparing the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final statistic we assessed in this area is the number of residents who returned home from the nursing home. We found that 6.2 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

We awarded this facility a grade of A for our inspections rating. Perhaps the most critical factor we consider in determining our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with better grades in this area most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This facility received 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered to be major deficiencies. This means that the inspectors did not consider any of these deficiencies to create an imminent risk to resident safety or health. Remember that deficiency-free inspections are uncommon in this industry.

The last category we assessed is long-term care. In that category, we awarded this nursing home a strong grade of B. Nursing homes that do well in long-term care typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to residents. On top of assessing the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients healthy. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.