Good Samaritan Society - Arlington

In addition to receiving a strong overall score, this facility fared well in short-term care. We awarded it an A- for that category, which is one of our best grades. Our short-term care grade is generally employed to grade a facility's performance with rehabilitation. To provide highly scored rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to feature better levels of skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other licensed professionals. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

Adding to its impressive category grades, we awarded this nursing home a grade of B+ for our inspections rating. Inspection grades weigh a host of factors found on a facility's inspection report. One key criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better grades in this area generally have very few severe deficiencies. This facility was assessed 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered severe. This means that CMS didn't deem any of these deficiencies to pose an immediate threat to resident health or safety. A few relatively minor dings aren't necessarily something to panic about.

Another one of this facility's impressive category grades came in the area of nursing care. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B+. Our nursing grade weighs many factors, however, the primary consideration is the number of nurse hours per patient per week. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this nursing home 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 often be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as employing a protocol of moving patients more frequently.

The next category we rated is long-term care, turned out to be this facility's weakest area. We awarded this facility a D in this category. This really is one of the couple of weak links of a very solid report card. If you are seeking anything other than rehabilitation, you should take a close look at each facility's long-term care scores. On top of considering the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 98.305084 percent of its patients. Surprisingly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this nursing home has fewer hospitalizations than most nursing homes. Sadly, a few of its other scores in the category weren't as favorable as these.