Good Samaritan Society - Liberal

On top of earning a great overall rating, this nursing home also excelled in our inspections category, which is based on its recent inspection reports. We awarded it an A for that category. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing these inspection grades. One of those factors is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is usually more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these can be relatively insignificant. This particular nursing home received 2 deficiencies on its inspection report. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also fared very well in the area of long-term care, where we awarded it a grade of A. Not many nursing homes received a better grade in this area. When nursing homes receive a grade in this range in long-term care it typically means it has plenty of staff and is a quality place to reside on a permanent basis. Once we concluded our assessment of the volume of nursing care, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is very impressive. Pneumonia sadly is often a dangerous condition for nursing home residents so we strongly prefer when a facility does not roll the dice on this issue. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This facility also was awarded a strong short-term care score. In fact, we gave it an above average score of B in this area. Our short-term care grades are considered to be more important for folks needing a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically utilizes additional skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not just nursing, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last metric we assessed in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

The final area we looked at is nursing, where this nursing home was given a grade of B-. Even though this turned out to be its weakest category rating, this is still not a bad grade. Nursing grades are tied to quantity of nursing care available. This facility provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Finally, our nursing ratings also consider quality-based assessments, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours, this nursing home performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is often a reliable indicator that a facility has sufficient quality controls in place. Many falls could be avoided if a nursing home supplies enough nurses aids to assist its patients.