Litchford Falls Healthcare

While this nursing home's overall grade was decent, it really excelled in the area of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A+ for that category, which is one of our highest scores. Our inspection grades weigh several factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better scores in this area typically have very few of these severe deficiencies. While this place had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This tells you that the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A few minor deficiencies should not lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

Additionally, we also wanted to draw your attention to the fact that this nursing home was awarded favorable long-term care marks in this assessment. We awarded them one of our better scores in that category, with a grade of B. This turned out to be the facility's second strongest score. Nursing homes that receive this kind of score in this category typically provide consistent around the clock care to make sure residents are well cared for. Once we finished looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses, we then looked at the facility's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 98.69565 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is very impressive. Pneumonia is too frequently a deadly ailment for nursing home patients so we strongly prefer when a nursing home does not roll the dice on this issue. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.03 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Unfortunately, this facility only earned a D for its short-term care score, which is not an impressive grade. Our short-term care grades are meaningful for residents requiring rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually mandates additional highly-skilled nursing. This means a broad range of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Considering its weak score in this category, we weren't shocked to discover this nursing home offered far fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most nursing homes. The last item we assessed in this category is the percentage of residents who who were able to eventually return home from the facility. This facility struggled quite a bit in this metric as well, with just 4.8 percent of its patients returning home. Unfortunately, this was quite a bit below average.

This nursing home's weakest area is nursing, which is the final category we scored. Sadly, it received an F in this category. Even with multiple respectable grades in other categories, this score is still alarming so we wanted to make sure you are aware. When computing a facility's nursing rating, we look at the number of hours nurses are with patients as well as the skill levels of those nurses. This place offered just 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient per day. This statistic is well below the national average. To pair with its low totals in the area of nursing hours per patient, this nursing home also did not perform as well in the quality-based measures we looked at in calculating our nursing grades. We looked at the percent of residents experiencing pressure ulcers and major falls. This facility had more falls and pressure ulcers than the average facility.