Good Samaritan Society - Westbrook

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this nursing home performed well in long-term care. In fact, we gave it an A for that category. Facilities that excel in this category tend to be well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to patients. After looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 98 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Vaccines are critical to keeping residents out of the hospital. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Turning to our inspection category, this nursing home excelled in that area, which is based on the facility's government inspections. We awarded it an A for that category. Inspection grades account for several factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One key criteria we look at is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better grades in this category usually have few severe deficiencies. This particular nursing home received 4 deficiencies on its inspection report. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also excelled in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of A-. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. The nursing score features a variety of datapoints. The most heavily weighted factor is the number of hours nurses spend with residents. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures 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 nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as employing a system of turning a patient at least once a day.

Switching gears to our next area, this nursing home also performed well in the short-term care category. We gave it a B+ for that area. This wrapped up a first-rate report card. In our short-term care rating, we try to forge a valuable gauge for rehabilitation. In doing so, we analyze the nursing home's scope of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final datapoint we looked at in this area is the number of patients that returned home from the facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.