With another perfect score, Pioneer Lodge put on magazine's honor roll.

By John Green - The Hutchinson News - jgreen@hutchnews.com

A nursing home in Coldwater has made an elite list of care homes from around the nation.
The 34-bed Pioneer Lodge is included in U.S. News and World Report's "2012 Honor Roll" of nursing homes for receiving perfect five-star ratings from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services for at least four consecutive quarters in of all of its quality ranking criteria.

The home, in a community of less than 800, also carried the distinction of recording zero deficiencies for both its last state health and fire code inspections.

Another 69 care homes in Kansas - including 18 within The News coverage area - also were recognized by the magazine for receiving an overall five-star ranking for the period, though those homes didn't achieve perfect scores in every category like Pioneer Lodge.

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) assigns from one to five stars to each home for how well it performs during health inspections, for its levels of nurse staffing and for "quality care" measures that are based on statistical data about the health and well being of its residents. Those include such things as the percentage of residents who received recommended vaccinations, and the percentage who had pain, bedsores, urinary tract infections, and other care-related problems.

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