Dove Healthcare - Rice Lake

In addition to being a first rate facility overall, this nursing home also excelled in the area of inspections, where it received an A+. Few facilities fared as well in this area. These inspection grades take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these items by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also wanted to draw your attention to the fact that this nursing home excelled in our long-term care category. We gave them an elite grade of A+ in this category. Facilities that do well in this category tend to provide patients with better supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. After considering the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents out of the hospital. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Turning the page to our third area, we awarded this facility a score of A for its short-term care score. This is a very strong rating. Our short-term care ratings are based on the nursing home's quantity of highly-skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This means a wide spectrum of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, not to mention other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the number of residents who eventually returned home from this facility. We found that 5.7 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

The final category we assessed was nursing, where this facility was awarded a grade of A. This finished off a very strong profile. Only a select few facilities received an A- or better in every category. When computing our nursing ratings, we analyze both nursing hours and the levels of licensure of those nurses. This facility provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed certain nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We look at these metrics as predictive indicators of the caliber of nursing care provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.