Richland Bean Blossom Health Care Center

To go along with its relatively modest overall grade, we awarded this nursing home an A for our inspections rating. This grade is far more impressive than its overall score. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing these inspection grades. One critical factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some of these are quite minor. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A couple minor deficiencies shouldn't stop you from considering a nursing home.

This facility's short-term care score turns out to be one of its best grades. The nursing home was awarded a B- in this category. In determining our short-term care ratings, we scrutinize the facility's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other highly trained professionals. This area is typically a fair assessment of the facility's ability to rehabilitate patients. In this facility's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per patient than the typical facility. The hope is that this does not adversely impact the quality of care. The last metric we considered in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 4.7 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is below average.

This nursing home's second lowest score was long-term care, where it received just a D in that area. This is a well below average score. When facilities receive this kind of grade in long-term care it is a bad sign for resident care and it may mean that the nursing home is not as well-staffed with nurses and aids. Once we concluded our assessment of the quantity of nursing care, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination record. Frankly, we were a bit bothered by the fact that this nursing home vaccinated just 90.17341 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Surprisingly, this place was actually decent at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had just 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. This is its best score in this category.

The last category we assessed was nursing. Unfortunately, we gave it a lowly F in this category, which is a very poor score. This is certainly a major disappointment. Nursing scores are heavily correlated with nurse staffing levels. This nursing home provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident daily. This is an alarmingly low total. In addition to performing poorly in terms of nursing hours, this facility also had rock bottom scores in the quality-based measures we looked at in determining our nursing ratings. For starters, we looked at the percent of patients experiencing pressure ulcers and major falls. This facility was at more than twice the national average in both of these data points. This is concerning when you consider that many bed sores and falls are believed to be preventable with better nursing care. This sealed this facility's fate of receiving a very poor nursing score.