Good Samaritan Society - International Falls

In addition to faring well overall, this nursing home earned a very solid nursing grade as well. It received one of our better scores in the category with a B+. Nursing ratings are primarily associated with a nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 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 generally be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

An additional quality feature for this nursing home is that it was awarded a favorable short-term care score. In fact, this turned out to be its second best category score. In this category, we gave this nursing home a B+. With our short-term care grade, we try to craft a valuable gauge for rehabilitation. In this process, we look at a facility's offerings of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last item we assessed in this category is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

Turning to another of this nursing home's strengths, it also earned a very impressive inspection rating. In fact, inspections turned out to be one of its best category grades. In that category, we awarded this facility a grade of B+. Perhaps the most important factor we look at in determining our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Places with better grades in this category typically dodged the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. 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. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

The final area we graded was long-term care. In this area, we gave this nursing home a decent grade of B-. This actually ended up being this facility's weakest area. In computing our long-term care ratings, we scrutinize the personal care offered to the facility's patients. Once we assessed the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 98.78788 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is higher than most nursing homes. Finally, this place was also able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.