Eben Ezer Lutheran Care Center

In addition to receiving a strong overall rating, this facility fared even better in the area of inspections which is associated with the facility's recent inspections. In fact, we awarded it an A for this category, which is one of our best scores. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining our inspection grades. One of those factors is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some of these can be relatively insignificant. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This means CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility received impressive grades in the category of long-term care as well. As a result, we awarded it one of our best scores in that area with a area of A. Facilities that receive this kind of grade in long-term care typically provide consistent around the clock care to ensure patients are well cared for. In addition to looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 97.89474 percent of its residents. Vaccines are critical to keeping patients out of the hospital. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Another strong feature for this facility is that it received an impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of B. Our nursing score is based on a handful of datapoints, most of which are based on levels of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 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 frequently be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The next area we rated is short-term care, ended up being this nursing home's worst area. We awarded this nursing home a D in that area. This was one of just a few weak links of a strong report card. In determining our short-term care scores, we size up a nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other licensed professionals. This category is considered to be a reliable measure of the facility's ability to rehabilitate patients. It appears that this place was below average in the two key staffing areas we assessed. The facility offered fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most facilities. The last datapoint we considered in this area is the number of residents that ultimately were able to return home from the nursing home. This nursing home struggled quite a bit in this area as well, with just 3.6 percent of its residents returning home. Unfortunately, this was quite a bit below average.