Good Samaritan Society - Ellis

On top of faring well in its overall grade, this nursing home received a nearly flawless inspection report. Consequently, we gave it one of our highest scores in this area with an A-. These inspection grades weigh several factors, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these items by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. While this facility had a few deficiencies on its report, none were serious based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also was superb in the category of long-term care, where we gave it a score of A-. Very few nursing homes performed better in this category. Facilities that do well in long-term care typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to residents. In addition to considering the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 97.744354 percent of its residents, which is far higher than the average nursing home. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This nursing home is also strong in the area of short-term care, where it was given a score of B+. It outperformed most facilities in this category. In the category of short-term care, we attempt to assess indicators of a nursing home's rehabilitation. We assess a nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses and physical therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last statistic we considered in this category is the number of residents who ultimately returned home from the facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

The next category we rated is nursing, in which this nursing home was awarded a grade of B. Even though this is its poorest category rating, this is nevertheless an impressive grade. The nursing grade assesses quite a few subcategories, most of which are tied to quantities of nurse staffing. 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 nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.