Hastings Senior Health & Living

To pair with a strong overall score, we awarded this facility an A+ for inspections. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing these inspection ratings. One of those factors is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some can be relatively insignificant. This nursing home was assessed 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe deficiencies. This means that CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies to cause an immediate threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also was superb in the category of short-term care, where we awarded it a grade of A. Not many facilities performed better in this area. Our short-term care grades are presumably more important for people requiring rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation generally requires higher levels of highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not only nursing, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Unfortunately, it does not look like this facility provided data regarding its registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. Finally, we assessed the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 7.3 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

This facility also was awarded a dominant long-term care score. In fact, this turned out to be this facility's third strongest category grade. In that category, this facility received a score of A-. When facilities receive a grade in this range in this category it typically means it has plenty of staff and is a quality place to reside on a permanent basis. On top of looking at the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is very impressive. Pneumonia is too frequently a life or death health condition for nursing home residents so we like it when a nursing home doesn't leave its residents vulnerable. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

In the final category we assessed, this nursing home received an impressive grade grade of B+ in our nursing category. With this score, the nursing home wrapped up a very strong profile. When determining our nursing ratings, we assess both nursing hours and the training levels of those nurses. This facility provided 0 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 place Minnesota in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as employing a protocol of turning a patient even once per day.