Charter House

We also would like to note that this nursing home excelled in our nursing rating. We gave them an impressive grade of A+ in this area. We looked at the licensure of nurses at the nursing home, in addition to the quantity of hours the nurses were with residents, in determining our rating in this category. This particular nursing home provided 1.8 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics 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 Minnesota in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as employing a policy of moving a patient even once per day.

This facility also received an A+ for its short-term care score. In determining our short-term care scores, we analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The objective is to create a barometer for comparing the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. This nursing home employs both physical therapists and registered nurses. Not all facilities employ these skilled professionals. Lastly, we assessed the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 6.4 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

Building on its fine assessment, this nursing home also was given a dominant long-term care score, with a grade of A. Long-term care scores of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. After considering the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination data. Unfortunately, it does not look like this facility submitted vaccination data. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Wrapping up this nursing home's impressive resume, we awarded this nursing home an A- for our inspections rating. With this score, the nursing home completes its straight A report card. These inspection scores weigh several factors, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can learn more about each of these items by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Although this place had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were serious based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.