Good Samaritan Society - Larimore

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A for our nursing rating. We weighed the qualifications of nurses at the nursing home, in addition to the quantity of time the nurses were with residents, in determining our rating in this category. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed very well when it comes to 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, this facility excelled in the category of inspections, where it received an A-. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. Our inspection grades account for several factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better scores in this category tend to have few severe deficiencies. This nursing home received 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe. This tells you that CMS did not consider any of these deficiencies to pose an immediate risk to resident health or safety. We should note that deficiency-free inspections are rare in this industry.

This facility received a strong short-term care score as well. We gave it one of our higher scores in that category with a score of B+. Our short-term care grades are based on the facility's quantity of highly-skilled nursing services. This includes a wide scope of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, in addition to other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

Turning to our final category, this facility was given a highly favorable long-term care rating. We gave it a B+ in that area, wrapping up one of our finer profiles. When facilities receive this type of grade in long-term care it is typically a good sign for patient care and indicates that the place is well-staffed with nurses aids. One of the statistics we considered after nursing hours is vaccinations. This facility administered the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. This is a reliable method to minimize negative health outcomes for the nursing home population. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.