Wheatland Nursing & Rehabilitation Center

Wheatland Nursing & Rehabilitation Center is a small nursing home located in Russell, Kansas. This is a very respectable facility. We gave it an overall grade of B, which is a respectable score. At the end of the day, this place is a solid choice for most people. This place's strong profile was highlighted by its inspection score, which we will address in the next section.

On top of receiving a great overall grade, this facility also earned first-rate health inspections in recent years. We awarded it one of our better scores in this area, with an A. Perhaps the most important factor we consider in determining our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities with higher scores in this area most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. While this facility had a few minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in this industry.

This facility also received a strong short-term care grade. Indeed, we gave it an above average score of B+ in this category. Short-term care ratings are based in part on the nursing home's quantity of skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This means a broad range of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. This nursing home fared much better in the final metric we assessed in this area, which was the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return home. This place fared as well as just about any facility in Kansas in this area with 82.5 percent of its residents returning home. At most nursing homes, fewer than half of their short-term residents are able to return home.

Another strong feature for this facility is that it received an impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of B. The nursing rating analyzes several factors, many of which are associated with levels of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 3.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at certain nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We look at these datapoints as reliable measures of the quality of nursing care offered, since better care tends to reduce these problems.

The last area we scored is long-term care. We awarded it a C in that category. This is a decent grade in this area. Our long-term care grade is often used to score a nursing home's performance as a traditional convalescent home, as opposed to focusing on the skilled nursing services provided by a rehabilitation facility. After considering the quantity of care provided by nurses, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination records. We were optimistic to find that this facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia. This nursing home also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.57 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.