Valley Vista Care Center of Sandpoint

To go along with its strong overall score, we awarded this facility an A+ for inspections. Our inspection ratings are based on datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that receive favorable grades in this category tend to have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. This place was assessed 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This indicates that the inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies to pose an immediate threat to resident health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

An additional reason we graded this facility so highly is that it was awarded an A+ long-term care score. This is just about as elite as it gets in this area. Long-term care grades of this caliber generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. After considering the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 99.5283 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is far higher than the majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Adding to its strong resume, this facility also received an excellent nursing score, with a grade of A. When determining our nursing scores, we look at both staffing levels and the levels of licensure of those nurses. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as having a system of moving a patient more often.

The last category we analyzed is short-term care, where this facility received a grade of A-. This wrapped up a very strong profile. Not many facilities received an A- or better in in each area we assessed. Short-term care ratings are based on a nursing home's quantity of highly-skilled nursing services. This includes a wide spectrum of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final metric we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.