Falls City Care Center

While this facility's overall grade was not bad, it really excelled in the category of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A for that category, which is one of our best scores. Our inspection scores weigh several factors included in a facility's inspection report. One key criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better grades in this area tend to have few severe deficiencies. This nursing home was assessed 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered to be major deficiencies. This indicates that the government inspectors did not consider any of these deficiencies to cause an imminent risk to patient health or safety. We should note that deficiency-free inspections are rare in the industry.

One of the other reasons we rated this facility so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing score. Nursing proved to be its second best category grade. In that area, we gave this facility an B. The nursing rating is based on numerous subcategories. The most heavily weighted factor is the amount of time nurses spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at 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 facility the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by having a protocol of turning a patient more frequently.

This nursing home was awarded its third most favorable category score in the category of long-term care. We gave this nursing home a grade of B- in this category, which is a decent grade. If you are looking for anything other than short-term rehabilitation, you should take a close look at each facility's long-term care grades. After assessing the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination data. We were pleased to find that this nursing home vaccinated 94.14634 percent of its residents against pneumonia. This facility keeps its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This nursing home's worst category was short-term care, which is the last area we scored. Sadly, it received an F for this category. Despite a few solid scores in other categories, this grade is nevertheless concerning so we would like to to make sure you are aware. Our short-term care grades are critical for prospective residents in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally requires more highly-skilled nursing services. This means a vast scope of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Unfortunately, we found that this nursing home provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. The final statistic we looked at in this area is the percentage of residents that who were able to eventually return home from the facility. This facility struggled quite a bit in this area as well, with just 4.1 percent of its residents returning home. Unfortunately, this was well below average.