Idaho State Veterans Home - Lewiston

We gave this nursing home an A in the short-term care category. Short-term care ratings are critical for residents requiring rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates more skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means a wide spectrum of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last statistic we assessed in this area 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 facility's patients returned home.

Another strength of this nursing home is its favorable grade in nursing. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of A-. Our nursing rating is primarily based on a nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The next category we graded is long-term care. In that area, we gave this nursing home a grade of C. If you are seeking services other than rehabilitation, you should take a close look at long-term care scores. After considering the amount of care provided by nurses, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination records. Candidly, we were a bit alarmed this facility vaccinated a relatively low 85.167465 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Fortunately, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This facility did not receive a favorable inspection grade. We gave it a score of just D in this category. Inspection scores relate to a nursing home's government inspections. We weight poor inspection ratings heavily in our assessment. Since government inspections are compiled by independent inspectors, we consider this information to be reliable. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing our inspection grades. One critical factor is health deficiencies. We recommend you scrutinize the level of severity of the deficiencies. Tragically, this place had one category L deficiency. This type of deficiency indicates widespread threats to patient safety or health. This type of deficiency is very damaging to a nursing home's inspection rating. Lastly, we would like to draw your attention to the fact that this place was assessed large government fines in excess of $50,000. This generally signifies that government inspectors grew tired after multiple years of failed inspections.