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 impressive grades, this facility received an excellent nursing grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of A- in that category. Our nursing rating is primarily based on the facility's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can frequently be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This nursing home was given a strong short-term care grade as well. We gave it one of our higher grades in that area with a score of B+. In calculating these short-term care grades, we analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our goal is to formulate a measure for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different facilities. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final statistic we considered in this area is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.

In the last area, this nursing home also received a very strong long-term care score, with a grade of B+. This finished off a first-rate report card. In a long-term care setting, the facility's primary objective is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. After assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 79.87013 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is a few points lower than we expected but still a reasonably acceptable percentage. Although its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we hoped for, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.