Gundersen Tri-County Care Center

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. These inspection ratings weigh several factors, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these items by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. It does not look like we have information about this nursing home's deficiencies. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility truly excelled in the area of long-term care, where we gave it a grade of A. Only a select group of nursing homes performed better in this area. When facilities receive a grade in this range in long-term care it typically means it's well-staffed and is a quality place to reside on a permanent basis. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents, which is very impressive. Pneumonia sadly can be a life threatening health condition for nursing home residents so we like it when a facility does not leave this to chance. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

The next highest grade we gave this nursing home came in the category of nursing, where we gave it a grade of B-. This wasn't quite as good as some of its other scores, but a grade in this range is not the end of the world. Our nursing score is mostly tied to a facility's nurse staffing. This facility provided just 0.2 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Finally, nursing scores also consider quality-based measures, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours, this place performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is generally a good indicator that a place has sufficient quality controls in place. Some falls can be avoided if a facility supplies enough nurses aids to assist its patients.

The last area we scored was short-term care, where this facility was awarded a C. This proved to be this facility's least impressive category. This is nevertheless not the end of the world. Short-term care ratings are crucial for prospective residents looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates higher levels of highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes a wide spectrum of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like this nursing home provided registered nurse or physical therapist staffing data. The final measure we assessed in this category is the number of residents that ultimately were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that just 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home. This figure was below average.