Good Samaritan Society - Blackduck

To pair with its favorable overall performance, we awarded this nursing home an A for our inspections rating. Inspection ratings account for a host of factors found on a facility's inspection report. One key criteria we look at is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher scores in this category generally have few severe deficiencies. This nursing home was hit with 9 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This indicates that the inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies to pose an immediate threat to patient safety or health. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspections are rare in the industry.

One of the other reasons we graded this nursing home so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing grade. Nursing proved to be its second best category grade. In that category, we gave this nursing home an B+. We looked at the levels of nurses working for the nursing home, as well as the number of hours those nurses worked with residents, in computing our rating in this area. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed very well in the area of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Turning to our next area, this nursing home also earned a grade of B+ for its short-term care rating. This is a well above average score in this category. Our short-term care grades are considered to be more important for patients requiring rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation generally mandates more skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means not only nursing, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other forms 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 information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last metric we looked at in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that 4.2 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

The final area we analyzed was long-term care, in which this nursing home received a B-. This ended up being this facility's worst area. This is still a middle of the pack score. In a long-term care environment, the facility's primary objective is to maintain residents' quality of life and keep them safe. After considering the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination data. Candidly, we were a bit bothered by the fact that this nursing home vaccinated 79.45206 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which happens to be quite a bit lower than average. On a more positive note, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.