Bigfork Valley Communities

Bigfork Valley Communities is the only facility located in Bigfork, Minnesota. We awarded this facility an A- overall grade, ranking it in the top third of all facilities in the nation. We can not find many negative things to say about this place. Its scores are as good as they get. If you look below, you will see this facility's category grades, which are also quite good.

In addition to performing well in its overall grade, this facility received an excellent long-term care grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of A in that category. When facilities receive this type of grade in this category it is a good sign for patient care and suggests that the place is well-staffed with nurses aids. In addition to looking at the elite level of care provided by nurses aids and other staff at this facility, we also were pleased by the nursing home's vaccination statistics. By way of example, this nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is very impressive. This combination proved to be successful as this place also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This nursing home also excelled in the category of short-term care, where we awarded it a score of A-. Not many facilities fared better in this category. In our short-term care rating, we seek to craft a meaningful gauge for rehabilitation. In this process, we assess a nursing home's offerings of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. One of this nursing home's strength is that it offers more hours of care from registered nurses to its residents. Lastly, we considered the number 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.

This facility is also strong in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of B+. It outperformed most nursing homes in this category. Our nursing rating analyzes the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We factor in both the levels of skill of those nurses as well as the number of hours spent with patients. This nursing home provided 4.4 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis, which is among the better figures in the country. A significant percentage of those hours were provided by registered nurses, which are one of the most skilled levels of nurses. We were very impressed by both of these figures. In addition to looking at levels of nursing care, we also looked at a few quality measures in determining our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We look at these statistics as predictive measures of the quality of nursing care being provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.

Turning to the final category we assessed, this nursing home received a decent score in the area of inspections as well. In fact, we awarded it a B for that category. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating these inspection scores. One critical factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some are relatively minor. This nursing home was hit with 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered to be severe. This tells you that the government inspectors didn't deem any of these deficiencies to pose an imminent threat to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.