Grace Lutheran Communities - River Pines

In addition to receiving a strong overall rating, this nursing home also received an A+ inspection rating. This is based on its recent inspection reports. An A+ in this category is one of the highest complements we can offer a nursing home. Arguably the most important factor we look at in determining our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Facilities with higher scores in this area most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. 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 facility also received an A+ long-term care grade, making it one of the few nursing homes to be given multiple A+ category grades. When nursing homes receive this kind of score in this category it is usually a good sign for patient care and suggests that the place is well-staffed with nurses aids. Once we assessed the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 98.13664 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 also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility excelled in our nursing rating. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. When calculating our nursing ratings, we look at both nursing hours and the levels of licensure of the nurses. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the state 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 by employing a system of moving patients more often.

In our final category, this facility also was given a very strong short-term care grade, with a grade of A-. This topped off an elusive straight A report card. In calculating our short-term care ratings, we scrutinize the facility's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. This area is generally a solid assessment of a nursing home's ability to rehabilitate patients. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last metric we looked at in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.