Good Samaritan Society - Battle Lake

On top of being a first rate facility overall, this facility also performed well in long-term care, where it earned an A. Few facilities did better in this category. Nursing homes that do well in this category tend to provide patients with closer supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. After considering the quantity of nursing care, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia sadly can be a deadly ailment for nursing home residents so we strongly prefer when a facility doesn't take any chances. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Adding to its elite resume, this nursing home also excelled in our short-term care category. In fact, we gave it a grade of A in that area. Short-term care scores are critical for prospective residents needing rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically utilizes additional skilled nursing services. This includes a broad scope of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final metric we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients who who were able to eventually return home from the facility. 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.

Among its many impressive grades, this facility received an excellent nursing grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of A in that category. In determining our nursing grades, we factor in both nursing hours and the training levels of the nurses. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics 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 nursing home the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as having a policy of turning residents more frequently.

This nursing home has received near flawless government inspections in recent years. We awarded them an A in this category. This is one of the few nursing homes in the nation to receive an A- or better in all four categories. Arguably the most critical factor we consider in computing our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Facilities with better scores in this area most likely avoided the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. Although this place had a few deficiencies on its inspection report, none of them were serious based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.