Good Samaritan Society - Battle Lake

On top of being a first rate facility overall, this facility also excelled in the area of nursing, where it received an A+. Few nursing homes fared better in this category. Our nursing rating assesses several datapoints, many of which are based on quantities of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed very well in terms of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

This nursing home also was given an A+ for its long-term care score. Nursing homes that receive this type of score in this category tend to provide consistent 24/7 care to make sure patients are kept in good health. Once we assessed the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is far higher than the majority of nursing homes. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This facility also received a nearly flawless inspection report. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A+. Inspection ratings are based on many pieces of information found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that excel in this category typically have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these places should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. Fortunately, although this nursing home had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that CMS didn't 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 last area, this nursing home also excelled in our short-term care category. In fact, we gave it a grade of A in that area. This wrapped up a straight A report card. Short-term care ratings are based in part on a nursing home's quantity of highly-skilled nursing services. This includes a wide spectrum of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, in addition to other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last item we looked at in this category is the number of patients who returned home from the nursing home. We found that 6.2 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.