Clark Fork Valley Nursing Home

This facility received a quality overall score as described above, but we especially want to point out its nearly flawless inspections in recent years. We gave it an A in this area. Our inspection grades weigh a host of factors included in a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher grades in this area generally have few severe deficiencies. This particular nursing home received 6 deficiencies on its inspection report. Overall, this is still a good inspection report, but we'd always recommend looking into any deficiencies you find troubling.

Among this facility's other strengths is its elite nursing grade. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of A-. The nursing score includes quite a few factors, many of which are based on nursing hours. This facility provided 0.3 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 the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by having a policy of turning a patient even once per day.

Turning to the next category, this nursing home also earned a grade of B for its short-term care rating. This is an above average grade in this area. Short-term care grades are commonly used to gauge a facility's performance with rehabilitation To offer high-end rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally need to offer higher levels of skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other highly skilled individuals. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last metric we considered in this category is the percentage of patients that were able to 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.

This facility's worst category is long-term care, which is the final category we looked at. For this area, we awarded this nursing home a grade of just D. If you are looking for services other than rehabilitation, you should take a close look at long-term care scores. In addition to considering the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is more than most nursing homes. To our surprise, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility has fewer hospitalizations than most nursing homes. Unfortunately, some of its other scores in this category were not as favorable as these.