Good Samaritan Society - Atkinson

In addition to its strong overall grade, we gave this facility an A for our long-term care rating. In a long-term care setting, the primary goal is to maintain residents' quality of life and keep them safe. On top of assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 78.37838 percent of its patients. This is a bit below what we expected but still a reasonably acceptable figure. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Among its many impressive grades, this facility was awarded first-rate short-term care score. In fact, we gave it a grade of A in this category. In the category of short-term care, we attempt to evaluate indicators of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. We look at a nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses and physical and occupational therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the number of residents that were able to return home from this facility. We found that 5.3 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

Racking up yet another strong category grade, this nursing home also excelled in the area of inspections, where it earned an impressive grade of A-. Few facilities performed better in this area. Inspection grades account for several factors found on a facility's inspection report. One key criteria we consider is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better scores in this area usually have few of these severe deficiencies. While this nursing home had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

The last area we scored is nursing, where this facility was awarded a grade of A-. This completed a very impressive profile. Very few nursing homes earned an A- or better in all four categories. Our nursing score weighs several components, many of which are based on nursing hours. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also factored a few quality measures into our nursing grades. This nursing home was relatively weak in two of the major areas we focus on, with below average scores for minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. These areas are generally reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care provided.