Benedictine Health Center of Minneapolis

In addition to being a quality nursing home overall, this facility really excelled in nursing, where it received an A. Few facilities performed better in this category. We analyzed the levels of nurses working for the nursing home, in addition to the number of hours those nurses spent with residents, in computing our rating in this area. This nursing home provides 0.5 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 generally be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by having a protocol of moving patients even once per day.

Adding to this nursing home's list of achievements, it also was awarded a high-end short-term care grade. We gave them a strong grade of A- in this category. Our short-term care ratings are thought to be more important for residents requiring rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation typically utilizes higher levels of highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes not only nursing services, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we considered the percentage of patients who who were able to eventually return home from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.

Adding to its impressive category grades, we awarded this nursing home a grade of B+ for our inspections rating. Our inspection scores weigh a host of factors found on a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with better grades in this area typically have very few of these severe deficiencies. Although this facility had a few deficiencies on its inspection report, none of them were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. A few relatively minor deficiencies are not something to panic about.

The final area we looked at is long-term care, which proved to be this nursing home's weakest category. We awarded this nursing home a D in this area. However, you shouldn't judge this nursing home based solely on a single category, since it received multiple superb scores in other areas. When facilities receive a score in this range in long-term care it typically means the facility did not perform well in our measures relating to resident care. After looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination record. We were somewhat surprised to discover that this facility vaccinated only 89.27335 percent of its patients for pneumonia. To our surprise, this nursing home actually fared well at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had just 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. This is its best feature in this category.