Good Samaritan Society - Bottineau

Although we gave this nursing home a poor overall score, we gave it a fairly respectable grade in nursing, where it received a B-. This was certainly better than its other category grades. In calculating a facility's nursing grade, we consider the quantity of hours nurses are seeing patients as well as the levels of training of those nurses. This nursing home averages just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures. Although this place got dinged a bit for its nursing hours per resident, it excelled in some of these quality metrics. With fewer than five percent of its residents experiencing pressure ulcers, it performed well in this area. This is typically a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as employing a policy of turning a resident even once per day.

This nursing home's long-term care grade appears to be one of its better grades. The facility was given a B- in this category. With our long-term care rating, we focus on the quantity of care provided by a nursing home, as well as a handful of quality measures. On top of looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. Fortunately, this facility provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is a very respectable datapoint. Finally, this facility was also able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The third area we assessed is short-term care. In that area, we gave this nursing home a grade of C. In the category of short-term care, we endeavor to qualify measures of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. We look at the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. Unfortunately, this place was below average in terms of its quantity of registered nurse and physical therapy hours provided to its patients based on the measures we assessed. The critical question is whether this also impacted quality of care. The final metric we looked at in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that just 3.6 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is below average.

In the final category of inspections, this nursing home had an abysmal showing. Sadly, it received an F in our inspection rating. This is our most heavily weighted category in our scoring system. For places with bad inspection scores, you should really scrutinize any severe deficiencies found on their recent inspection reports. This particular facility had 6 deficiencies by CMS. The only favorable thing we found is that none of the deficiencies were in the categories that indicate that they created a risk to resident safety or health. Lastly, this nursing home was cited by CMS for possible abuse or neglect. This is generally a really bad sign. We would never recommend this facility.