Dakota Alpha

To pair with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for its nursing grade. When facilities receive this kind of grade in this category it is typically a good sign for resident care and indicates that the place is well-staffed with nurses aids. Once we finished looking at the volume of care provided by nurses, we then looked at the facility's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is very impressive. Pneumonia sadly is often a life threatening condition for nursing home patients so we strongly prefer when a facility doesn't leave this to chance. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This nursing home also earned an A+ inspection score, making it one of the few places to receive multiple A+'s in our category grades. This is based on the place's government inspections. An A+ in this category is one of the biggest complements we can pay to a facility. Our inspection grades account for a host of factors included in a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we look at is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher grades in this category usually have few of these severe deficiencies. While this facility had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G through L. This means that the inspectors 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.

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. In determining our nursing grades, we look at both the number of hours nurses spend with residents and the levels of licensure of the nurses. This nursing home averages 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 nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Switching gears to the fourth category, this nursing home also performed well in our short-term care category. In fact, we gave it a grade of A in that area. This topped off truly elite profile. Our short-term care scores are considered to be most critical for folks requiring a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally mandates more highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes not merely nursing, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last datapoint we considered in this category is the percentage of residents that eventually returned home from the facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.