Caribou Memorial Living Center

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility excelled in our nursing rating. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. The nursing grade consists of many components, many of which are tied to nursing hours. This nursing home averages 0.8 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place Idaho in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by having a system of turning patients more frequently.

This nursing home also received a nearly flawless inspection. As a result, it earned one of our highest grades in that area with an A+. This was one of the few places to receive multiple A+'s. Our inspection grades are tied to several pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspections. Places that score well in this area tend to have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. While this nursing home had a few deficiencies on its report, none were major deficiencies based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its strong profile, this facility also was given a strong long-term care score, with a score of A. Facilities that do well in this category typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to residents. Once we assessed the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 98.765434 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is far higher than the average nursing home. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

In our last area, we gave this facility a grade of A+ for our short-term care rating. This completed a first-rate report card. In our short-term care category, we attempt to craft a sound gauge for rehabilitation services. In doing so, we assess the nursing home's offerings of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final metric we looked at in this area is the number of residents that who were able to eventually return home from the facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.