Twin Falls Center

Although we gave this facility a terrible overall grade, we awarded it a grade of B- for our nursing rating. Our nursing rating includes a variety of factors. The most important one is the number of hours nurses spent with residents. This place provides only 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This is a somewhat discouraging figure which is well below the national average. Lastly, we also looked at several nursing quality measures. While this nursing home got docked a bit for its nursing hours per resident, it actually excelled in a few of these quality metrics. With less than five percent of its residents suffering from pressure ulcers, it fared well in this subcategory. This is typically a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of turning a resident more often.

This nursing home also didn't rate too badly in the category of short-term care. Indeed, we awarded it a grade of B- in that category, which is among its higher scores. Our short-term care grades are arguably most critical for individuals requiring rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation generally utilizes additional skilled nursing services. This includes not only nursing, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. In this facility's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than the average facility. The hope is that this does not adversely impact the quality of care. The final datapoint we considered in this category is the percentage of residents who eventually returned home from the nursing home. We found that just 6 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

Interestingly, this nursing home's terrible overall grade can't really be attributed to its government inspections. We awarded it a grade of C for our inspections rating. We would argue that one of the most critical factors in evaluating an inspection report is deficiencies. In this regard, we especially focus on the severity of the deficiencies. This place was assessed 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were in any of the categories labeled G through L. This indicates this facility avoided the more ominous categories of deficiencies. Finally, this facility was cited by CMS for possible abuse or neglect. We would not recommend this facility under any circumstance.

Switching gears to our fourth category, this facility didn't perform very well in this category either. With a rock bottom grade of F in long-term care, this is about as terrible as it gets. Facilities that don't fare well in this category typically aren't as well-staffed and are lagging in some of the areas of routine personal care we assessed. In addition to looking at the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 93.37748 percent of its residents. This is slightly below what we expected but still a respectable figure. To our surprise, this nursing home actually fared well at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had just 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. This was its best score in this category.