Belle Fourche Healthcare Community
2200 13th Ave, Belle Fourche SD 57717 · (605) 892-3331 · 84.21% estimated occupancy 1Updated: Aug 1, 2020 · By Nick Lata
Belle Fourche Healthcare Community is a nursing home in Belle Fourche, South Dakota, which has 8,007 people. We awarded it an overall grade of B-, which is a middle of the pack grade. This nursing home seems to have some things working in its favor. One of the highlights of this nursing home's report card is its impressive short-term care rating, which is addressed in the next paragraph.
Additional Details:
Accepts Medicare 1 :
Accepts Medicaid 1 : 83 Beds
CCRC :
For profit - Limited Liability company
Resident Council:
Family Council:
Medical Staff Hours Per Patient (2019)
Short-term Care Quality
This facility's short-term care rating is notably more impressive than its overall grade. Due to a strong performance in this category, it received one of our better grades in that area with a B+. In the category of short-term care, we try to qualify indicators of a facility's rehabilitation services. We analyze a nursing home's skilled nursing services, including the ones performed by registered nurses and physical and occupational therapists. One of this nursing home's strengths is physical therapy hours. We found that it offers at least 50% more hours with physical therapists to its residents than most other facilities. The final metric we looked at in this area is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. This nursing home was better than average in this metric with 52.5 percent of its patients returning home.
Facility Inspections
In addition, this facility also excelled in the area of inspections, where it received a grade of B+. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining these inspection ratings. One key factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some of these end up being relatively insignificant. Although this place had a few deficiencies on its inspection report, none were major deficiencies based on CMS' scale. Remember that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in the industry.
Nurse Quality
We also awarded this facility a favorable grade in nursing. This facility earned a grade of B in this category, which is one of our better grades. There are a variety of datapoints within this grade. Most of these subcategories relate to nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 3.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also assessed certain nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We view these metrics as predictive measures of the caliber of nursing care being provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.
Long-term Care Quality
Switching gears to our next area, we awarded this facility a D in our long-term care category. This was the nursing home's least impressive category grade. Sadly, this category hurt the facility's overall grade to a certain degree. Long-term care ratings in this range generally are a bad sign for the quantity and quality of care provided by nurses and aids. On top of assessing the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. Candidly, we were a bit bothered by the fact that this nursing home administered the vaccine to a relatively low 85.77236 percent of its patients. Surprisingly, this nursing home was actually decent at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.61 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. This is its best score in this category.
Overall Rating Over Time
Compared to national and state averages across all facilities.
Belle Fourche Healthcare Community Quality Metrics
Minimizes Pressure Ulcers
This is the percentage of patients that sustained a pressure ulcer. Pressure ulcers are damage to the skin resulting from staying in one position for too long.
Percent of Patients with Pressure Ulcers
Lower is Better
Minimizes Serious Falls
This indicates the percent of patients who sustained a fall leading to serious injury.
Percent of Patients with Serious Falls
Lower is Better
Minimizes Urinary Tract Infections
This figure is a measure of the percentage of long-term stay residents which had a UTI. UTI's could be an indication of a nursing home with worse hygiene protocols. However, this datapoint may also be misleading for some nursing homes due to varying reporting standards for infections.
Percent of Patients with UTIs
Lower is Better
Appropriately Uses Anti-Psychotic Medication
This statistic indicates the percent of long-term care patients receiving antipsychotic drugs. While antipsychotic medications serve an important medical purpose, it is important to confirm these drugs are being used only where medically required. In some cases, increased usage of these drugs may suggest a facility is using these medications to control patient behavior.
Percent of Patients
Lower is Better
Appropriately Uses Anti-Anxiety Medication
This indicates the percentage of long-term patients that were prescribed antianxiety drugs. These drugs are typically given to residents suffering from anxiety and depression.
Percent of Patients
Lower is Better
Managing Depression Among Residents
This is a measure of the percent of long-term care residents who are demonstrating depressive symptoms. Many believe that this is a reliable measure of quality of care.
Percent of Patients
Lower is Better
Appropriate Vaccine Usage
This indicates the percentage of residents who were given the flu and pneumonia vaccines. High vaccination rates should be the norm at this point.
Percent of Patients
Higher is Better
Residents Maintain Autonomy
This tells you the percent of residents who required increased assistance with activities of daily living over time. High levels of needing for assistance with ADL's could be a sign of erosion of a resident's well-being.
Percentage of Patients
Lower is Better
Ability to Keep Residents Mobile
This datapoint measures the percent of long-term stay patients who remained mobile levels. Some would argue that the ability to move around is important for residents' well-being.
Percentage of Residents
Higher is Better
Hospitalizations
This metric tracks the number of hospitalizations per 1,000 days of patient care. Minimizing hospitalizations is important to the physical health of residents.
Hospitalizations per 1,000 resident days
Lower is Better
Short-term Care: Rehospitalizations
This is the number of rehospitalizations per 1,000 days of short-term patient care.
Percentage of Residents Rehospitalized
Lower is Better
Short-term Care: ER Visits
This metric is a measure of the number of times residents are sent to the emergency room per 1,000 days of short-term patient care. Staying out of the emergency room is one way to measure short-term care.
Percentage of Patients
Lower is Better
Short-term Care: Facilitates Functional Improvement
Measures the percentage of short-term stay residents that experienced functional improvements.
Percentage of Resident
Higher is Better