Cokato Manor

We also found that this facility excelled in our long-term care rating. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. When facilities receive a score in this range in this category it generally means it's well-staffed and is a quality place to reside on a permanent basis. After we finished assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses, we turned to the facility's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 99.4382 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia tragically can be a dangerous condition for nursing home residents so we like it when a facility does not leave its residents vulnerable. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This facility has also received near flawless health inspections in recent years. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. Arguably the most critical factor we look at in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a facility's inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher grades in this area most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. Amazingly, this was one of the few nursing homes in the country that had no deficiencies whatsoever on its inspection report. This is very impressive. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Another reason we rated this nursing home so highly is that it received an A+ nursing grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. There are many subcategories included in this category. Many of these factors reflect nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Switching gears to the last category, this nursing home also performed well in our short-term care category. In fact, we gave it a grade of A- in that category. This rounded out a straight A profile. In crafting our short-term care ratings, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The objective is to formulate a barometer for sizing up the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last item we looked at in this category is the number of residents that who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.