With just two nursing homes in the city, you only have a couple of choices in Sparta, Wisconsin. The nursing homes here received a first-rate city grade of A-. Even with just a few facilities, this is still a great achievement. By way of comparison, we awarded the facilities in the local city of Wisconsin Rapids a city grade of B-, which is a decent grade. Nevertheless, we found the facilities in Sparta to be rated much higher than the ones in Wisconsin Rapids. We were so impressed with Sparta that we ranked it as one of the 500 best cities in the United States.
In addition to performing well in its overall grade, this city's nursing homes performed spectacularly well in our inspections category. In fact, some of its facilities received virtually flawless inspection reports this year. Consequently, the city received one of our highest scores in that area with an A. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing our inspection ratings. One critical factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is usually more important than the number of deficiencies, as some of these can be quite minor. In addition, the city also really excelled in the area of short-term care, where it received a grade of A-. Rounding out its excellent report card, this place received grades of A- and B for our nursing and long-term care categories respectively.