Bethany on the Lake

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it received an A+ short-term care grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. Short-term care ratings are based on a facility's quantity of skilled highly skilled professionals. This includes a wide range of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. This nursing home is above the national average both in terms of its quantity of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its residents. These are generally good indicators of quality short-term care. The last metric we looked at in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We found that it performed as well as just about any facility in Minnesota in this area with 67.3 percent of its residents returning home.

We also awarded this nursing home a score of A+ for its long-term care grade. When nursing homes receive a grade in this range in this category it typically means it's well-staffed and is an overall good place to live on a permanent basis. After assessing the significant amount of nursing care provided by this facility, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is significantly higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. This combination proved to be effective as this nursing home was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Continuing with its first-class performance, this facility also earned an A+ inspection score. This grade is based on its recent government inspection reports. An A+ in this category is one of the highest complements we can pay to a facility. Inspection scores account for several factors included in a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher grades in this area tend to have very few of these severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this nursing home had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Switching gears to the last category, this nursing home also performed well in the nursing category. We gave it an A for this category. This rounded out a straight A report card. We looked at the skill-level of nurses at the nursing home, as well as the quantity of time the nurses spent with residents, in determining our grade in this area. This facility provides an incredible 4.1 hours of nursing care per patient each day. Out of this total, many of the hours were provided by registered nurses, which is one of the more highly trained levels of nurses. On top of offering high levels of care, this facility also excelled in several of the quality-based metrics we looked at. With less than 5 percent of its residents suffering from pressure ulcers, it fared as well as any facility the country in this category. This is generally an indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Many pressure ulcers could be prevented by providing better nursing care and a system of turning residents more often.