Good Samaritan Society De Smet

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. Perhaps the most significant factor we consider in calculating our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Facilities with higher grades in this category most likely avoided the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. We were not able to locate deficiency counts for this nursing home. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Among its many elite grades, this nursing home was awarded an excellent long-term care grade. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A in that area. If you are looking for services other than short-term rehabilitation, you should take a close look at each nursing home's long-term care ratings. One of the statistics we considered on top of nursing hours was vaccines. This nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccination to 88.51351 percent of its residents. While its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we like to see, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Adding to its strong resume, this facility also received an excellent nursing score, with a grade of A-. The nursing score includes many factors. The most heavily weighted one is the amount of time nurses spend with residents. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The final category we rated was short-term care. In this category, we awarded this facility an above average grade of B. Our short-term care scores are believed to be more meaningful for residents in need of a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates more skilled nursing. This includes not merely nursing services, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final item we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients that were able to return home from the facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.