Little Falls Care Center

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this facility also received an excellent short-term care score, with a grade of A. Our short-term care ratings are based in part on a nursing home's quantity of skilled nursing services. This means a vast scope of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, not to mention other forms of therapy. One of this nursing home's strength is that it offers more than seven hours of care per week from registered nurses to each resident. This is really the gold standard in this area, as it's about 50% higher than the average facility's level of registered nurse staffing. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of residents who returned home from this nursing home. This place outperformed the vast majority of facilities in the country with 63.5 percent of its residents returning home.

Adding to its impressive category scores, this facility also excelled in the category of inspections, where it received an A. These inspection scores take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can find more information about each of these factors by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This tells you that CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. We should note that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in the industry.

This nursing home also received a very impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A. When computing a facility's nursing grade, we consider the amount of time nurses are seeing patients and the levels of training of the nurses. This place boasts an impressive 3.9 hours of nursing care per patient each day, of which more than an hour of these were provided by registered nurses. This is among the most highly trained levels of nurses. Finally, this nursing home also excelled in several quality-based metrics we assessed. With fewer than five percent of its residents experiencing pressure ulcers, this place performed as well as any facility the country in this category. This is generally an indicator that a place has reliable quality controls. Many pressure ulcers can be avoided by offering better nursing care and having a policy of moving patients even once per day.

The final area we rated is long-term care, in which this nursing home was awarded a B. Although this wound up being its least impressive category rating, this is still a quality rating. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in this category it generally means it's well-staffed and is a quality place to live on a permanent basis. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 95 percent of its patients. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients out of the hospital. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 1.34 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility has fewer hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes.