Good Samaritan Society - Pine River

One of the reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it earned an impressive inspection grade. Inspections ended up being its best category. In this area, we awarded this facility an A. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing our inspection grades. One of those factors is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is usually more important than the number of deficiencies, as some can be quite insignificant. Although this nursing home had some 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.

Among its many high-end grades, this nursing home was given an excellent short-term care grade. In fact, it received a score of A in that category. In determining our short-term care ratings, we assess a nursing home's levels of skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other highly skilled individuals. This area is considered to be a solid assessment of the nursing home's rehabilitation services. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we considered the number of patients that returned home from this facility. We found that 6.5 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

Building on its high-end resume, this facility also was given a dominant long-term care grade, with a grade of A-. Long-term care ratings in this range generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. One of the statistics we considered in addition to nurse's aid hours was vaccinations. This nursing home provided the pneumonia vaccination to 94.25288 percent of its residents. This is a reliable method to avoid negative health outcomes for the elderly population. 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 only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

The last category we looked at was nursing. This nursing home was awarded an above average nursing grade this year, with a grade of B. Even though this was not nearly as good as several of its other scores, this is still one of our stronger scores in that category. In computing a facility's nursing score, we weigh the quantity of hours nurses commit to patients as well as the level of skill of those nurses. This nursing home provides 0.4 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 nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can many times be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.