Tarkio Rehabilitation & Health Care

On top of earning a great overall grade, this facility also received an elite nursing score. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of A. Our nursing score assesses the facility's nurse staffing levels. We weigh both the levels of skill of those nurses as well as the quantity of hours spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed very well when it comes to minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Among the reasons we graded this nursing home so highly is that it was given a very impressive long-term care score. In fact, long-term care ended up being its second best category grade. In that category, we awarded this facility a score of A-. When nursing homes receive this type of score in this category it is typically a good sign for patient care and suggests that the place is well-staffed with nurses aids. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 97.4359 percent of its patients. Vaccines are critical to keeping patients healthy. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This facility also performed well in the category of inspections. In fact, it earned a nearly flawless government inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our best grades in that category with a grade of B+. These inspection scores take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can learn more about each of these factors by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A few relatively minor deficiencies are not necessarily the end of the world.

The final category we graded was short-term care, in which this facility was given a grade of B-. While this ended up being its poorest category grade, this is still not a poor grade. In crafting these short-term care ratings, we analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our purpose is to formulate a barometer for sizing up the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. Unfortunately, it does not look like this nursing home provided information about its staffing of registered nurses or physical therapists. The final measure we assessed in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We discovered that just 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is actually below average.