Life Care Center of Idaho Falls

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this nursing home received an A+ for nursing. Our nursing grade looks at the facility's nurse staffing levels. We look at both the levels of training of the nurses and the number of hours spent with patients. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed very well in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

This nursing home was given dominant marks in the area of short-term care. For this reason, it was given one of our best grades in that area with a grade of A+. Our short-term care grades are presumably more meaningful for folks requiring a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually utilizes higher levels of skilled nursing. This includes not just nursing services, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last measure we looked at in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We found that 6.8 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.

Turning to our inspection category, this facility excelled in that category, which is based on the nursing home's recent inspection reports. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A for that category. Our inspection scores are tied to datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that score well in this category typically have few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This tells you the government inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

In the last category, this facility also received a very strong long-term care rating, with an A. This finished off an elusive straight A profile. When facilities receive a grade in this range in long-term care it typically means it has plenty of staff and is an overall good place to live on a permanent basis. After we finished assessing the amount of care provided by nurses, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia sadly can be a life or death ailment for nursing home residents so we like it when a facility doesn't leave its residents vulnerable. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.