Good Samaritan Society - Holstein

In addition to being a great overall grade, this facility also received A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing these inspection grades. One key factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these end up being relatively minor. Although this facility had some deficiencies on its inspection report, none of them 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 was given a strong long-term care grade as well. We awarded it one of our better grades in that area with a score of B. When facilities receive a score in this range in long-term care it typically means it's well-staffed and is a quality place to live on a permanent basis. Once we finished looking at the amount of nursing care, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 96.8421 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia is too frequently a life threatening ailment for nursing home patients so we like it when a facility does not take any chances. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Turning to the next category, this nursing home also earned a score of B for its short-term care rating. This is a well above average grade in this category. Our short-term care grade is generally used to judge a nursing home's performance with rehabilitation To offer high-end rehabilitation services, facilities generally must provide better levels of skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other types of therapists. 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. The final item we assessed in this area is the percentage of residents who who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

The last area we analyzed is nursing. We gave this facility a solid score in this category, with a grade of B-. While this isn't as favorable as a few of this nursing home's other scores, it is nevertheless not the end of the world. Our nursing category weighs quite a few data points, many of which are associated with levels of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in some quality-focused statistics. We look at the percent of patients who sustained pressure ulcers and major falls. Sometimes these metrics are measures of the quality of nursing care, since better care tends to reduce these issues.