Good Samaritan Society of Barbour County

In addition to being a strong facility overall, this place really excelled in our inspections category, where it received an A-. Not many facilities performed better in that area. Arguably the most significant factor we look at in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with better scores in this area typically dodged the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to this facility's list of strengths, it also received a top-shelf long-term care grade. We gave them an elite strong of A- in this area. Facilities that receive this kind of score in long-term care tend to provide consistent around the clock care to ensure residents are kept in good health. In addition to assessing the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 99.431816 percent of its residents, which is much higher than the average nursing home. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This facility also was given a strong short-term care grade. In fact, we awarded it an above average grade of B+ in this category. Short-term care scores are vital for residents in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally requires additional skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes a broad scope of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last datapoint we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients that ultimately 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 nursing home on a permanent basis.

The final area we rated was nursing. In this category, we awarded this nursing home a decent grade of B-. This is this facility's least impressive category. Nursing grades are primarily tied to a nursing home's nurse staffing. This facility provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient per day. This figure is significantly below average. Lastly, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics. Although this place got docked a bit for nursing hours per resident, it excelled in a few of these quality metrics. With fewer than five percent of its patients experiencing pressure ulcers, it did well in this area. This can be a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by having a system of turning residents more frequently.