Blue River Nursing & Rehab

Although we gave this facility a terrible overall grade, we awarded it a grade of C for our inspections rating. In fact, the facility received very impressive inspection report this year. Our inspection grades are tied to many datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Deficiencies are a key thing to look for on these reports. Severe deficiencies indicate a risk to the well being of residents. This nursing home was hit with 5 deficiencies on its government inspection report, but we were relieved to find that none were category G through L deficiencies. This indicates that CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies to create an imminent risk to patient safety or health. Lastly, this facility was flagged by CMS for possible abuse or neglect. We prefer to avoid facilities with this designation. Please do your best to find an alternative nursing home.

This nursing home's next most respectable score is long-term care, but it nevertheless earned just a D in that area. This is still a well below average grade. If you are looking for anything other than short-term rehabilitation, you should take a close look at long-term care grades. On top of considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 94.39655 percent of its residents. To our surprise, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this nursing home has fewer hospitalizations than most nursing homes. Unfortunately, some of its other scores in the category weren't as favorable as these.

Tragically, this facility received an F for its short-term care score. In the category of short-term care, we endeavor to assess measures of a facility's rehabilitation. We look at the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and physical therapists. With its grade in this area, we weren't surprised to find that this place was well below average in terms of the number of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its residents based on the data we looked at. Frankly, this was what we expected here. Lastly, we considered the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. This definitely wasn't a strength for this facility. We found that just 4.5 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most facilities, around half of their patients are able to return home so this is well below average.

The final category we assessed is nursing. It received a lowly F for this category, which is a rock bottom grade. Our nursing score assesses the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We look at both the levels of training of the nurses as well as the quantity of hours spent with residents. This nursing home provided only 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This is well below average. On top of receiving below average scores for total nursing hours, this facility was a bit less impressive in some of the quality-based metrics we looked at in calculating our nursing ratings. We looked at the percent of residents sustaining pressure ulcers and found this facility was at approximately 150 percent of the national average in this metric.