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 long-term care rating. Long-term care scores in this range generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. One of the statistics we considered on top of nursing hours is vaccinations. This facility administered the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. This is a reliable method to minimize unnecessary hospitalizations for the elderly population. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Another impressive feature of this facility is its inspection grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A-. Our inspection scores account for a host of factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with better scores in this category typically have very few of these severe deficiencies. While this place had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

In our last area, we gave this nursing home an A- for its short-term care grade. This rounded out a very strong report card. In computing these short-term care grades, we quantify the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The goal is to formulate a tool for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different facilities. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home.