Caribou Memorial Living Center

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for its nursing grade. Our nursing score looks at the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We weigh both the levels of licensure of those nurses as well as the amount of time spent with residents. This facility provided 0.8 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this place 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 generally be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by having a protocol of turning residents more often.

This nursing home also received an A+ inspection score, making it one of the rare places to receive multiple A+'s in our categories. This grade is based on the place's inspections. An A+ in this category is one of the biggest complements we can pay to a nursing home. Inspection ratings account for several factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better grades in this category tend to have few severe deficiencies. While this facility had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that CMS didn't 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.

Building on its high-end resume, this facility also was awarded a dominant long-term care grade, with a grade of A. Facilities that receive this kind of grade in long-term care tend to provide consistent 24/7 care to ensure residents are kept in good health. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 98.765434 percent of its residents. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients healthy. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Moving on to the final area, this nursing home also excelled in the short-term care category. We gave it a grade of A- in this category. This rounded out truly elite profile. Short-term care scores are crucial for patients requiring rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically utilizes additional skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means a vast spectrum of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we considered the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.