Avera Sacred Heart Majestic Bluffs

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing our inspection ratings. One key factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being quite insignificant. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report, which is still very impressive. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its top-shelf profile, this facility also received an excellent short-term care grade, with a grade of A. Our short-term care grades are based on a nursing home's quantity of highly-skilled nursing services. This means a broad scope of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we considered the percentage of residents that who were able to eventually return home from this nursing home. We found that 6 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

This nursing home also was given a strong long-term care score. This actually turned out to be this nursing home's third strongest category grade. In that category, we awarded this facility a grade of A-. When nursing homes receive this kind of score in this category it is usually a good sign for resident care and suggests that the nursing home is well-staffed with nurses aids. On top of looking at the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 99.5 percent of its patients, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia is too frequently a life or death health condition for nursing home residents so we like it when a facility doesn't take any chances. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

In the final category we assessed, this nursing home received a very strong grade of A- in our nursing category. With this grade, the facility topped off a straight A report card. The nursing score weighs a number of data points. The most heavily weighted variable is the quantity of hours nurses spent with patients. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some quality-based measures in this category. This facility fared well in some of the quality measures we assessed. For example, in terms of the number of its residents suffering from pressure ulcers, this facility performed better than the national average. This is generally an indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided with better nursing care.