Meadowbrook at Black River Falls

While we graded this facility incredibly poorly overall, it received a fairly respectable nursing grade this year. We gave it a grade of B- in that category. There are quite a few criteria included in this category. Most of the criteria are tied to the quantity and quality of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Finally, while this place got docked a bit for its nursing hours per resident, it excelled in some of our quality measures. With less than five percent of its residents experiencing pressure ulcers, it did very well in this subcategory.

This nursing home also didn't fare too badly in the category of short-term care. In fact, we awarded it a grade of B- for that area, which wound up being among its more favorable scores. Our short-term care ratings are likely more critical for individuals needing a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically utilizes additional highly-skilled nursing. This means not just nursing, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. In this facility's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per patient than the average facility. The last item we looked at in this category is the percentage of residents who returned home from the facility. We found that just 4.2 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

This nursing home did not receive favorable inspection reports in recent years. In fact, it only received a grade of D for its inspection grade. Inspection scores factor in many items found on the nursing home's recent inspection reports. If you see severe deficiencies on the inspection reports, this is generally a bad sign. Severe deficiencies indicate a threat to the well being of residents. This particular nursing home was assessed a deficiency by CMS. Fortunately, it was not in one of the categories that suggest that it created a threat to resident health or safety. Finally, we want to draw your attention to the fact that this nursing home received large government fines in recent years amounting to over $100,000. This usually signifies that a nursing home's poor performance spanned multiple years.

The next area we rated is long-term care. This nursing home received an abysmal grade of F in that area. When facilities receive a score in this range in this category it typically means the facility didn't perform well in our quality measures relating to resident care. In addition to assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. As it turns out, this facility gave the vaccine to just 87.91209 percent of its patients, which is somewhat concerning. To our surprise, this place was actually decent at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. This was its best score in this category.