Good Samaritan Society - Mary Jane Brown

Good Samaritan Society - Mary Jane Brown is a small non-profit nursing home in Luverne, Minnesota. Featuring an overall grade of B+, this looks like a very good nursing home. You could certainly do much worse than this facility. The best part of this facility's strong report card is its inspection reports. Inspection grades are discussed in the next section

To go along with its favorable overall grade, we awarded this facility a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. Our inspection scores weigh a host of factors included in a facility's inspection report. One key criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher grades in this category generally have few of these severe deficiencies. Although this place had a few deficiencies on its inspection report, none were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

One of the other reasons we rated this facility so well is that it was given a dominant long-term care score. In fact, long-term care is its second most favorable category score. In that area, we gave this facility a grade of A-. Nursing homes that receive this kind of grade in this category tend to provide consistent around the clock care to ensure residents are kept in good health. On top of assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 98.79518 percent of its patients, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia sadly can be a life or death ailment for nursing home residents so we strongly prefer when a nursing home does not leave its residents vulnerable. This facility also keeps its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 1.44 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days.

In addition, this facility also received favorable nursing grades this year. In fact, we awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B. The nursing grade is based on several factors, many of which are tied to levels of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 2.9 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at some quality-based measures in this category. This place fared well in some of the quality-based metrics we looked at. By way of illustration, in terms of the percentage of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, this nursing home performed better than the national average. This is generally an indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided with better nursing care.

The last area we assessed was short-term care. This facility was awarded an above average short-term care score this year, with a grade of B-. Even though this wasn't as good as some of its other grades, this remains an acceptable rating in that category. In computing our short-term care grades, we scrutinize a nursing home's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other types of therapists. This rating is often a solid measure of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. This nursing home employs both physical therapists and registered nurses. Not all facilities employ these skilled professionals. The last statistic we assessed in this area is the number of patients that ultimately were able to return home from the facility. We found that just 43.6 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home. This figure was below the national average.