Good Samaritan Society Deuel County

In addition to receiving an elite overall grade, this nursing home also earned an A+ inspection grade. This score is based on the facility's recent government inspections. An A+ in this category is one of the highest complements we can offer a facility. Inspection scores weigh a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we look at is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better grades in this category tend to have very few of these severe deficiencies. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

On the list of its many elite grades, this facility was awarded a top-shelf long-term care score. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A- in that area. Facilities that excel in this category tend to provide residents with better supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. After we finished assessing the amount of care provided by nurses, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 96.09375 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia can be a life threatening condition for nursing home residents so we like it when a nursing home does not leave this to chance. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Turning the page to our third area, this facility was given an excellent short-term care grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of A- in that category. In computing our short-term care grades, we analyze the facility's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. This area is frequently a solid measure of the facility's ability to rehabilitate patients. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the percentage of patients that were able to return home from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

Moving on to our final area, this nursing home also performed well in our nursing category. We gave it a grade of B+ in that category. This finalized a very strong report card. We looked at the licensure of nurses at the nursing home, as well as the quantity of hours the nurses spent with residents, in determining our rating in this category. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures 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 South Dakota in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of turning residents more frequently.