Chosen Valley Care Center

The primary reason this nursing home received a decent overall score is its impeccable health inspections in recent years. We awarded it one of our better scores in that category, with a grade of A-. This is a notably better score than the facility's overall grade, which was decent but certainly not elite. Inspection grades are based on many items located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that excel in this area typically have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. This facility received 6 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe deficiencies. This means that the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies to be an imminent threat to resident safety or health. A few minor deficiencies should not stop you from considering a nursing home.

Adding to this nursing home's list of strengths, it also earned an excellent nursing rating. We awarded them an impressive grade of B- in this category. Our nursing grade is primarily based on a facility's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides only 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This is a somewhat alarming figure which is well below the national average. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this place surprisingly excelled in some of the quality-based metrics we assessed. It performed well when it comes to avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be measures of the quality of nursing care. In some cases, the quality of nursing care is every bit as important as the number of hours of care offered.

The third category we looked at is short-term care, where this facility received a grade of C in this area. In computing our short-term care scores, we assess the facility's levels of skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other highly skilled individuals. This grade is more often than not a reliable assessment of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. Unfortunately, this nursing home was below average in terms of its quantity of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its residents based on the measures we assessed. The critical question is whether this adversely affected quality of care. The last measure we assessed in this category is the number of patients who ultimately returned home from the nursing home. We found that just 4.4 percent of this facility's residents returned home. Unfortunately, this was below average.

This facility's weakest category was long-term care, which is the final area we assessed. For this area, we awarded this facility a grade of just D. In a long-term care environment, the facility's primary goal is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. One of the factors we considered after nurse's aid hours was vaccinations. Thankfully, this facility provided the pneumonia vaccination to 97.02971 percent of its residents. Surprisingly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this nursing home had less hospitalizations than the average nursing home. Sadly, some of its other scores in the category weren't as favorable as these.