Beaver Dam Nursing & Rehab Center

The main reason this facility received a decent overall score is its excellent government inspections in recent years. We gave it one of our higher grades in that category, with an A-. This is a notably better score than the facility's overall score, which was decent but not in the elite range. Perhaps the most critical factor we look at in computing our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places with better scores in this category most likely avoided the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

One of the other reasons we graded this nursing home so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing rating. In fact, nursing turned out to be its second best category grade. In that area, we gave this nursing home an B. We scrutinized the licensure of nurses employed by the nursing home, as well as the number of hours those nurses worked with residents, in computing our score in this category. This nursing home averages 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 nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This nursing home's third best area is long-term care. We gave it a grade of B- in this area. This is basically a middle of the pack grade in this area. With our long-term care assessment, we look at the sheer volume of care provided by a nursing home, as well as some quality metrics. On top of looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. We were a bit concerned this nursing home administered the vaccine to only 79.12621 percent of its patients. Nevertheless, this nursing home excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This facility's weakest category was short-term care, which is the last area we assessed. For this category, we gave this nursing home a grade of D. Our short-term care grades are likely more critical for individuals in need of rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation typically mandates additional highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means not just nursing, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Unfortunately, we found that this nursing home provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. The final statistic we assessed in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that just 2.9 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these subpar metrics was damning for this nursing home's short-term care score.