Bear Lake Memorial Skilled Nursing Facility

On top of being a first rate nursing home overall, this facility also excelled in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of A. Nursing scores are based in large part on quantity of nursing care available. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can many times be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Adding to its top-shelf assessments in other areas, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A- for our short-term care rating. Short-term care ratings are vital for residents looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually requires more highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes a broad spectrum of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other forms 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. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

Turning the page to our next category, this nursing home received an excellent long-term care score. In fact, it received a grade of A- in that category. When nursing homes receive a grade in this range in long-term care it typically means it has plenty of staff and is a quality place to reside on a permanent basis. One of the statistics we considered in addition to nursing hours is vaccinations. This nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccination is a reliable method to avoid unnecessary hospitalizations for the nursing home population. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This facility has earned near flawless inspections in recent years. We awarded them an impressive grade of A- in this category. This is one of the few places in the nation to receive an A- or better in every single category. Inspection grades take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these factors by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. While this nursing home had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were severe based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.