Good Samaritan Society-Prescott Village

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it received an A+ long-term care grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. For prospective patients looking for a permanent residence rather than rehabilitation, long-term care grades are a key measure. On top of considering the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 85.22727 percent of its residents, which is somewhat less than we were hoping for. Although its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we had hoped, at least this place was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

To complement its strong performance in other areas, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A- for our inspections rating. Nursing grades are primarily tied to the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by having a protocol of moving residents even once per day.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this nursing home was awarded a strong grade of A in our short-term care category. Our short-term care grade is commonly used to grade a facility's performance with rehabilitation To provide highly scored rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to have higher levels of skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other highly trained professionals. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last measure we looked at in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We found that 5.9 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

Adding to its impressive category grades, this nursing home also excelled in the area of inspections, where it received a grade of A-. This topped off a straight A report card for this facility. Our inspection ratings account for a host of factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One key criteria we look at is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher grades in this area typically have few of these severe deficiencies. Although this nursing home 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.