Fond Du Lac Lutheran Home

While this place's overall grade was not a highlight, it actually received a very good score in the area of inspections. We awarded it a B+ for that area, which is one of our better scores. Arguably the most significant factor we consider in calculating our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. It is typically in your best interest to avoid facilities that have a long list of severe deficiencies. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This tells you that CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A couple minor deficiencies are not the end of the world.

This nursing home received its second most favorable category grade in the area of short-term care. We awarded this facility a grade of B- in this area, which is a reasonably acceptable grade. Our short-term care ratings are based on the nursing home's quantity of highly-skilled nursing services. This includes a vast spectrum of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, in addition to other variations of therapy. In this place's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per patient than the typical facility. The hope is always that this does not adversely affect the quality of care. Finally, we looked at the number of residents that ultimately returned home from this nursing home. We found that 5.3 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was actually quite a bit below average.

This nursing home actually received a decent grade in the area of nursing as well. We awarded it a grade of C for that category, which is not a bad score. We analyzed the levels of nurses working for the facility, as well as the quantity of time those nurses were with patients, in determining our score in this category. This nursing home provides 0.2 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Finally, although this facility got docked a bit for its nursing hours, it excelled in some of our quality measures. With less than five percent of its patients experiencing pressure ulcers, it did remarkably well in this metric.

The final area we scored was long-term care. Unfortunately, we gave it an abysmal F in this category, which is a very poor grade. For prospective residents in need of a permanent residence rather than skilled nursing, long-term care is a very important category. Once we finished looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses, we turned to the facility's vaccination data. We were pleased to discover that this facility vaccinated 97.95918 percent of its residents for pneumonia. To our surprise, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility has less hospitalizations than most nursing homes. Sadly, some of its other scores in the category were not as favorable as these.