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.

This facility received a very good nursing grade this year as well. It received one of our better scores in that category with a grade of B+. There are a number of criteria included in this grade. Most of the criteria are tied to the quantity and quality of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well in the area of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Adding to its impressive category grades, we awarded this nursing home a grade of B+ for our inspections rating. Arguably the most significant factor we look at in determining our inspection grades is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Places with higher grades in this category most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. While this facility had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G through L. This means the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

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.