Aitkin Health Services

Located in Aitkin, Minnesota, Aitkin Health Services is one of just two available facilities in this area. Featuring an overall score of A+, this facility is without a doubt a phenomenal facility. We were so impressed with this nursing home that we ranked it in the top ten percentile of all facilities in the nation. As you will find below, this facility performed equally well in our category grades. In fact, we gave it straight A's!

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this nursing home received an A+ for nursing. There are a variety of criteria within this category. Many of these criteria are tied to the quantity of nurse staffing. This nursing home provided 3.7 hours of nursing care per resident per day. At least one quarter of this care was provided by registered nurses, which are skilled nurses. This is a high percentage of skilled nursing care. In determining our nursing scores, we apply additional weight to hours provided by registered nurses. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This facility also was given an A+ long-term care grade, making it one of the few nursing homes to receive several A+ category grades. Facilities that do well in long-term care typically provide residents with closer supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. After considering the quantity of care provided by nurses, we turned to the facility's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 94.73684 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is very impressive. Pneumonia is often a dangerous health condition for nursing home residents so we prefer when a nursing home doesn't take any chances. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Building on its high-end assessment, this facility also received an excellent short-term care score, with a grade of A. Our short-term care grades are based in part on the nursing home's quantity of skilled nursing services. This includes a broad scope of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. One reason for this facility's strong score in this category is that it provides more care with registered nurses to its residents than the average nursing home. The last datapoint we assessed in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to return home from the facility. We found that it performed respectably with 48.7 percent of its residents returning home.

Another impressive feature for this place is its inspection score. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A, completing its straight A performance. Inspection grades take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these factors by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. While this place had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.