Blackhawk Life Care Center

On top of being a great nursing home overall, it also earned A+ health inspections recently. Its inspections were virtually flawless. These inspection scores weigh several factors, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can find more information about each of these factors by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. While this facility had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G through L. This tells you CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also would like to emphasize the fact that this facility was given an elite score of A in our long-term care category. Facilities that excel in long-term care typically provide patients with more supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. In addition to looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia is often a deadly condition for nursing home residents so we strongly prefer when a facility does not roll the dice on this issue. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This nursing home also was given a fine short-term care grade. This actually is this facility's third most impressive category score. In that category, we awarded this facility a score of A-. With our short-term care rating, we seek to craft a valuable barometer for rehabilitation. In this process, we analyze a facility's scope of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of residents who eventually returned home from this nursing home. We found that 5.2 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.

The last category we looked at ended up being this facility's weakest category. However, even in its weakest link we still awarded it a decent grade of B- for our nursing category. Our nursing score is based on the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We look at both the levels of skill of the nurses and the amount of time spent with patients. This facility provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Finally, our nursing scores also consider some quality-focused statistics. We especially look at the percent of patients who experienced pressure ulcers and major falls. These metrics are measures of the quality of nursing care, since superior care can reduce these issues.