Good Samaritan Society - Fontanelle

On top of performing well in its overall grade, this nursing home received even higher grades in the category of short-term care. In fact, it earned one of our highest scores in that category with an A-. Our short-term care grade is commonly used to judge a nursing home's rehabilitation services. To offer highly rated rehabilitation services, facilities generally must feature higher levels of highly skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other highly trained professionals. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we considered the percentage of residents who were able to return home from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

Adding to its impressive profile, this facility also performed at a high level in the area of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless government inspection report this year. As a result, it earned one of our best grades in that area with an B+. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating these inspection ratings. One critical factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these end up being quite insignificant. While this place had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

In addition, this facility also received favorable nursing grades this year. In fact, we awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B+. We weighed the levels of nurses working for the nursing home, as well as the quantity of hours the nurses worked with patients, in determining our grade in this area. 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 typically be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The fourth category we analyzed is long-term care, where this facility received a grade of B+. This finished off a very favorable profile. Very few nursing homes earned a B+ or better in in each area we assessed. Facilities that do well in long-term care typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to residents. After considering the quantity of care provided by nurses, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 99.07407 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia can be a life or death condition for nursing home patients so we like it when a nursing home does not take any chances. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.