Essentia Health Northern Pines Medical Center

Essentia Health Northern Pines Medical Center is in Aurora, Minnesota. The city has a total of 3,299 people. We awarded this nursing home an A+ overall grade, ranking it in the top ten percentile of all nursing homes in the nation. We also want to point out that this facility is based in a hospital. Typically, this indicates that more intensive medical services are offered. This facility also received consistently good grades in all four of the major categories. More information about its category grades can be found below.

On top of being a first rate facility overall, this nursing home also excelled in the category of nursing, where it received an A+. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. The nursing rating is based on several factors, many of which are tied to levels of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 3.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can typically be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

We also wanted to alert you to the fact that this nursing home was superb in our long-term care rating. We gave them an elite score of A+ in this category. Facilities that excel in this category tend to be well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to residents. After assessing the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients healthy. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

We awarded this facility an A for our inspections rating. Inspection grades weigh several factors, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these issues by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Fortunately, although this place had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This means the government 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.

Turning to our fourth category, this nursing home received a very strong short-term care grade. In fact, we gave it a B+ in that area, topping off one of our more favorable report cards. In calculating our short-term care scores, we size up the nursing home's levels of skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other licensed professionals. This area is generally a solid assessment of the nursing home's rehabilitation. This nursing home elevated its grade in this category by offering more care from registered nurses to its residents than the average facility. Finally, we looked at the number of patients who were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.