Good Samaritan Society - Pipestone

With an overall grade this high, it should come as no surprise that this nursing home performed well in inspections, where it earned an A. Our inspection ratings are based on several pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that excel in this category typically have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these places generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. While this facility had a few deficiencies on its inspection 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.

Contributing to its dominant resume, this nursing home also excelled in our long-term care category. In fact, we awarded it a score of A in the area. Nursing homes that excel in this category typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to residents. After considering the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is far higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This facility received a very good nursing grade this year as well. It received one of our better scores in that category with a grade of B+. The nursing grade considers numerous factors. The most important one is the number of hours nurses spent with patients. This facility provided 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 nursing home 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 often be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The final category we rated was short-term care. This nursing home was awarded a better than average short-term care rating in our assessment, with a B-. Even though this isn't nearly as impressive as some of its other category grades, this is nevertheless a decent rating for that category. With our short-term care score, we seek to craft a fair barometer for rehabilitation services. In this process, we look at the nursing home's level of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. 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 final datapoint we considered in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 4.7 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is below average.