Good Samaritan Society - Park River

In addition to performing well overall, this facility also received nearly flawless government inspections. As a result, it earned one of our best scores in that area with an A+. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating our inspection ratings. One of those factors is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies end up being quite minor. Although this place had a few deficiencies on its report, none of them were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also fared very well in the category of long-term care, where we gave it a grade of A. Few facilities received a better grade in this area. Facilities that excel in this category tend to be well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to patients. After considering the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 99.346405 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is significantly higher than the average nursing home. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Turning our next area, this facility was given first-rate short-term care score. In fact, it received a score of A- in that area. In computing our short-term care ratings, we size up the nursing home's levels of skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. This rating is typically a meaningful measure of the facility's rehabilitation. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last item we assessed in this area is the percentage of residents that 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 facility on a permanent basis.

The fourth area we rated was nursing, where this nursing home was given a B+. This rounded out a very favorable profile. Very few facilities received a B+ or better in every category. Our nursing grade weighs many factors, however, the paramount one is the number of nurse hours spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also factored a few quality-based metrics into our nursing grades. This facility was relatively weak in two of the major areas we focus on, with below average scores for minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. These areas are generally reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care provided.