Grace Lutheran Communities - River Pines

With an address in Altoona, Wisconsin, Grace Lutheran Communities - River Pines is one of just a few nursing homes in the city. This nursing home proved to be an A+ facility, which is our absolute highest score. In fact, we ranked this nursing home in the top ten percent of all nursing homes in the country. If you look below, you can see this nursing home's category grades, which look to be just as impressive as its overall rating.

We also wanted to note that this nursing home excelled in our nursing category. We awarded them an A+ in this category. There are a number of subcategories within this category. Most of these subcategories are tied to staffing levels. This nursing home provides 3.7 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 facility the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as employing a policy of moving a patient at least once a day.

This facility also earned an A+ inspection score, making it one of the few facilities to receive multiple A+'s in our category grades. This grade is based on the nursing home's government inspections. An A+ in this category is one of the highest complements we can pay to a facility. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating our inspection ratings. One key factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies are relatively insignificant. This particular nursing home received 5 deficiencies on its inspection report. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also excelled in the area of long-term care, where it received a score of A. Very few nursing homes received a better grade in this area. When facilities receive this type of score in this category it is usually a good sign for resident care and suggests that the place is well-staffed with nurses and aids. Once we assessed the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 97.83784 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is much higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.95 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The last category we analyzed is short-term care, where this nursing home was given an A-. This topped off a very strong profile. Very few facilities earned an A- or better in each of our categories. Our short-term care scores are presumably more meaningful for individuals in need of rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation usually mandates more skilled nursing services. This means not just nursing services, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other types of therapy. This nursing home elevated its grade in this category by offering more care from registered nurses to its residents than the average facility. Finally, we looked at the number of residents who were able to return home from this nursing home. It outperformed the vast majority of facilities in the nation in this area with 57 percent of its patients returning home. This is a significantly higher rate than most nursing homes.