Good Samaritan Society - Oakes

On top of earning a strong overall rating, this nursing home fared even better in our inspections category which is based on the facility's recent government inspections. We awarded it an A for this area, which is one of our highest grades. Inspection ratings take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these factors by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This tells you that CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Remember that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in the industry.

This facility is also strong in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of B+. It outperformed most nursing homes in this category. Our nursing rating is mostly based on a nursing home's nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Turning to the third category, this nursing home also received a score of B for its short-term care rating. This is an above average score in this area. In determining our short-term care scores, we assess a facility's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. This grade is more often than not a useful measure of a nursing home's rehabilitation. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last item we considered in this category is the number of patients who eventually returned home from the nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

Moving on to our fourth area, this nursing home was given a C for long-term care, which is generally an acceptable rating. Our long-term care grade is generally used to assess a nursing home's performance as a traditional convalescent home, as opposed to focusing on the skilled nursing services offered by a rehabilitation facility. On top of considering the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 99.44444 percent of its patients, which is higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Lastly, this facility was also able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.