Centracare Health System - Long Prairie

In addition to being a great overall grade, this facility also received A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. Inspection scores account for a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we look at is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with better grades in this area usually have few severe deficiencies. While this nursing home had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the inspectors did not 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.

To complement its first-rate accomplishments in other areas, we awarded this nursing home a score of A for our long-term care rating. Facilities that receive this type of score in this category tend to provide consistent around the clock care to make sure residents are kept in good health. In addition to considering the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 97.560974 percent of its patients, which is far higher than the average nursing home. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

To complement its strong performance in other areas, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. The nursing score analyzes a handful of components, however, the primary consideration is the number of nurse hours per patient per week. This facility provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed very well in the area of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

In the final category we assessed, this nursing home was awarded an impressive grade grade of B+ in our short-term care category. With this score, the nursing home wrapped up a very impressive profile. In the area of short-term care, we seek to evaluate indicators of a facility's rehabilitation. We look at a nursing home's skilled nursing services, including the ones performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last statistic we assessed in this area is the percentage of residents that returned home from the nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.