Good Samaritan Society - Inver Grove Heights

In addition to being a quality nursing home overall, this nursing home really excelled at short-term care, where it received an A. Few facilities fared better in this area. Short-term care grades are typically employed to measure a facility's rehabilitation services. To offer quality rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally need to have higher levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other types of therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final measure we looked at in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that 5.6 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.

Adding to its impressive category grades, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A- for our inspections rating. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining our inspection scores. One of those factors is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies can be quite minor. 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.

Another strong feature for this facility is that it received an impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of B+. We weighed the licensure of nurses working for the nursing home, as well as the number of hours the nurses spent with residents, in calculating our score in this category. This nursing home averages 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 nursing home 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 many times be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The last area we rated was long-term care, which is this nursing home's weakest area. We awarded this facility a grade of D in this area. However, you should not judge this nursing home based solely on a single weak area, as it was given a few very strong grades in other categories. When nursing homes receive this type of grade in this category it is typically a bad sign for patient care and it may mean that the nursing home is not as well-staffed with nurses and aids. Once we looked at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination record. We were concerned by the fact that this facility vaccinated only 80 percent of its patients for pneumonia. Surprisingly, this facility was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility has less hospitalizations than many nursing homes. This was its best score in this category.