Essentia Health Fosston

In addition to being a first rate facility overall, this nursing home also performed well in our long-term care category, where it earned an impressive grade of A. Few facilities did better in this category. When facilities receive a score in this range in this category it typically means it's well-staffed and is an overall good place to live on a permanent basis. On top of considering the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia can be a life or death illness for nursing home residents so we strongly prefer when a facility does not roll the dice on this issue. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received an impressive grade of A- in our nursing category. Our nursing rating is mostly associated with the nursing home's nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.5 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 often be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This nursing home is also strong in the category of short-term care, where it received a grade of B+. It outperformed most nursing homes in this area. Our short-term care grades are likely more critical for individuals in need of a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically requires higher levels of highly-skilled nursing services. This means not merely nursing services, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

Wrapping up its impressive profile, this nursing home also performed a high level in inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless government inspection report this year. As a result, it earned one of our best grades in that category with a score of B+. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating our inspection ratings. One critical factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these are relatively insignificant. Fortunately, although this place had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G through L. This means the government inspectors didn't deem 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.