Anoka Rehabilitation and Living Center

On top of receiving a strong overall score, this facility also received an elite short-term care grade. We awarded them one of our higher grades in that area, with a grade of A. Our short-term care grades are presumably more important for people requiring rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation usually utilizes additional highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes not only nursing services, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final item we assessed in this area is the number of patients who ultimately were able to return home from the facility. We found that 6 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

This facility also performed well in inspections. It received a nearly flawless government inspection report this year. It received one of our best grades in that area with an B+. Few facilities with an overall grade in this range performed as well in multiple categories. Inspection scores weigh a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we look at is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better scores in this category usually have very few severe deficiencies. This facility was assessed 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe. This means that the government inspectors didn't deem any of these deficiencies an immediate threat to patient safety or health. We should note that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in the industry.

Adding to its profile, this facility also earned a grade of B for its nursing rating. This is a well above average score in this category. The nursing rating includes several datapoints. The most heavily weighted factor is the quantity of hours nurses spent with patients. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can typically be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This facility's weakest area is long-term care, which is the final category we assessed. Unfortunately, we gave it a lowly F in this category. Despite some strong grades in other areas, this grade is nevertheless somewhat alarming so we felt obligated to point it out. When nursing homes receive this type of score in long-term care it is a bad sign for resident care and it may indicate that the facility is not as well-staffed. On top of looking at the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 93.548386 percent of its residents, which is somewhat less than we were hoping for. Surprisingly, this place actually fared well at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. This is its best score in this category.