Good Samaritan Society - Jackson

We also found that this nursing home excelled in our long-term care rating. We gave them a grade of A+ in this area. Nursing homes that excel in long-term care typically provide patients with more supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. After assessing the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients out of the hospital. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This facility has received near flawless government inspections recently. We gave them an impressive grade of A in this area. Arguably the most significant factor we consider in calculating our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Places with better scores in this category most likely dodged the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. 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. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also excelled in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of A. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. Our nursing rating includes many subcategories, many of which are associated with nursing hours. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of moving a patient more often.

The final area we graded is short-term care, where this nursing home was given an A-. This rounded out a very strong profile. Very few facilities received an A- or better in all four categories. In determining our short-term care ratings, we size up a nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other highly trained professionals. This score is more often than not a useful assessment of a facility's rehabilitation services. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final datapoint we looked at in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to return home from the facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.