Franciscan Health Center

Franciscan Health Center is a small non-profit nursing home located in Duluth, Minnesota. Featuring an overall score of A+, this facility is without a doubt a superb facility. In fact, this facility has the prestigious distinction of being one of the top 100 facilities in Minnesota. This is an impressive feat in a state with a long list of elite nursing homes. Finally, this proved to be a very consistent nursing home with consistently strong scores in each of the major categories we assessed. More information about its category grades can be found below.

On top of being a first rate nursing home overall, this facility also excelled in the area of nursing, where it received an A+. Few nursing homes fared better in this category. There are several factors included in this category. Many of the subcategories reflect nurse staffing. This nursing home offers high levels of nursing care, with an average of 3.9 hours per resident each day. This is more nursing care than most nursing homes provide. Finally, this nursing home was also above average in each of the major quality measures we assessed in this category. For example, it performed well in terms of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. These areas are generally reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care a facility provides.

We also want to point out the fact that this facility was awarded an elite grade of A in our long-term care area. For long-term care residents, the nursing home's primary goal is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. While we determined this facility has an above average volume of nursing hours provided by nurses and other nursing staff, we found its vaccine statistics to be a bit low. This facility provided the pneumonia vaccine to just 86.03352 percent of its patients. This is one figure we'd love to see this facility improve. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This nursing home also was elite in the category of short-term care, where it received a grade of A. Very few facilities received a better grade in this category. Short-term care scores are vital for prospective residents requiring rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally requires higher levels of skilled nursing. This includes a wide range of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. One reason for this facility's strong score in this category is that it provides more care with registered nurses to its residents than the average nursing home. The final measure we assessed in this category is the number of patients that returned home from the facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

Finally, this nursing home also received excellent government inspections in recent years. We awarded it one of our best grades in the area of inspections, with an A-. Few nursing homes received an A- or better in every single category. Inspection grades are tied to several pieces of information found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that score well in this area tend to have few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. This particular nursing home received 3 deficiencies on its inspection report. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.