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 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.

In addition, we gave this facility a rock-bottom F in the category of short-term care. Our short-term care scores are important for residents seeking rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally requires additional skilled nursing. This means a vast scope of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Given its poor rating in this area, we weren't stunned to discover this place provides substantially fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per patient than most other nursing homes. The final item we assessed in this category is the percentage of residents who eventually returned home from the nursing home. This nursing home struggled quite a bit in this metric as well, with just 4.9 percent of its patients returning home. This was well below the national average.

This nursing home's least impressive category was nursing, which is the last area we looked at. Sadly, it received an abysmal F in this category. Despite some acceptable scores in other categories, this grade is still disappointing so we wanted to point it out. Nursing grades are heavily correlated with quantity of nursing care available. This facility offered only 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is well below average. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing scores. This place performed well in terms of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers.