Good Samaritan Society - Spokane Valley

In addition to being a quality nursing home overall, this facility really excelled in nursing, where it received an A. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. Our nursing grade is primarily tied to a nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home 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 state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as employing a system of moving a resident at least once a day.

This facility was given impressive grades in the category of short-term care as well. In fact, we awarded it one of our most superb grades in that category with a area of A-. In the area of short-term care, we attempt to qualify measures of a facility's rehabilitation. We analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and various therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final item we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients who eventually returned home from the facility. We found that 5.4 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

Moving on to another of this nursing home's strengths, it also received a very impressive inspection rating. In that area, we gave this facility an impressive grade of B+. Inspection scores are tied to several items found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that score well in this category have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these facilities should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. This particular nursing home received 6 deficiencies on its inspection report. Overall, this is still a good inspection report, but we'd always recommend looking into any deficiencies you find troubling.

This nursing home's least impressive area was long-term care, which is the final area we analyzed. In this category, we awarded this facility an D. We want to to point out this possible weak link, however, you should not over-emphasize one area either. Long-term care scores in this range generally are a bad sign for the quantity and quality of care provided by nurses and aids, as well as the levels of routine medical care available. Once we assessed the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 92.79279 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which happens to be a few points below what we anticipated but still a respectable percentage. To our surprise, this place was actually decent at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had just 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. This is its best score in this category.