Bethel Lutheran Home

In addition to earning a quality overall grade, this facility also received excellent inspections in recent years. We awarded it one of our best grades in that category, with a grade of A. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating these inspection grades. One key factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some end up being relatively minor. This place received 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe deficiencies. This tells you that CMS did not consider any of these deficiencies to be an imminent risk to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also fared very well in the area of long-term care, where we gave it a grade of A. Few facilities performed better in this area. Nursing homes that excel in this category typically provide patients with closer supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients healthy. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Moving on our next category, we awarded this nursing home a score of A- for its short-term care grade. This is a very impressive rating. In calculating our short-term care grades, we assess the nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other types of therapists. This score is often a reliable assessment of the nursing home's ability to rehabilitate patients. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last metric we considered in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

In our last area, we awarded this facility an A for our nursing grade. This rounded out a very strong report card. When determining a facility's nursing rating, we weigh the amount of time nurses are with patients and the skill levels of the nurses. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at certain nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We view these metrics as reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care being provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.