Centracare Health System - Long Prairie

To pair with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for its nursing grade. When nursing homes receive a grade in this range in this category it typically means it has plenty of staff and is a quality place to reside on a permanent basis. On top of considering the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is much higher than most nursing homes. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

One of the other reasons we rated this nursing home so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing score. In fact, nursing proved to be its second best category grade. In that area, we gave this nursing home an A. The nursing grade consists of quite a few datapoints, however, the paramount one is the level of nurse hours per patient per week. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as having a protocol of moving a resident even once per day.

Racking up yet another strong category grade, this facility also excelled in the area of inspections, where it earned a grade of A-. Few nursing homes performed better in this category. Inspection ratings are based on several datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that excel in this area tend to have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G through L. This tells you that CMS did not consider 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.

In the last category, this facility also was given an impressive short-term care score, with an A-. This completed a first-rate profile. Our short-term care grades are arguably most meaningful for people needing rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation typically requires more skilled nursing. This means not only nursing, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final statistic we looked at in this category is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We discovered that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.