Episcopal Church Home of Minnesota

In addition to being a first rate facility overall, this facility also excelled in the category of nursing, where it received an A+. Few nursing homes fared better in this area. Our nursing grade is based on the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We consider both the levels of skill of the nurses and the quantity of hours spent with residents. This nursing home averages 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as employing a system of moving residents even once per day.

Among its many elite grades, this facility was given an excellent short-term care grade. In fact, it received a score of A in that area. In our short-term care assessment, we try to forge a valuable barometer for rehabilitation services. In doing so, we analyze the nursing home's level of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final item we assessed in this category is the percentage of patients who ultimately were able to return home from the facility. We found that 5.5 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

This facility has received near flawless government inspections in recent years. We gave them an A in this category. Arguably the most critical factor we consider in computing our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Nursing homes with better grades in this area most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A few relatively minor deficiencies are not necessarily something to panic about.

The final category we assessed was long-term care. We awarded this nursing home one of our higher grades in this category, with a B. While this is not on par with a few of this facility's other grades, it is nevertheless a perfectly acceptable score. When facilities receive a grade in this range in this category it generally means it has plenty of staff and is an overall good place to reside on a permanent basis. After we finished looking at the volume of care provided by nurses, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 96.438354 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia can be a life threatening condition for nursing home patients so we strongly prefer when a facility doesn't take any chances. Clearly, this nursing home 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 figure.