Good Samaritan Society - St Luke's Village

One of the reasons this proved to be a great nursing home is that it received a very impressive long-term care score. This turned out to be its best category. In this area, we gave this facility a grade of A. When nursing homes receive this kind of score in this category it is a good sign for patient care and suggests that the nursing home is well-staffed with nurses aids. Once we looked at the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents out of the hospital. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Adding to this facility's impressive resume, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A for our inspections rating. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating these inspection grades. One key factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these can be relatively insignificant. While this facility had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were severe based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

The third area we looked at was short-term care. Adding to its strong profile, this facility also excelled in that category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of of A- in the category. Short-term care scores are based on a nursing home's quantity of skilled highly skilled professionals. This means a wide range of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, not to mention other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last item we considered in this area is the number of patients who who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. We found that 6 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

Moving on to our next area, this facility was given a very strong nursing rating. We gave it a B+ in that area, completing one of our more impressive report cards. The nursing grade includes a variety of data points. The most important factor is the quantity of hours nurses spend with patients. This nursing home averages 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at 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 nursing home the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as having a protocol of turning a resident at least once a day.