Good Samaritan Society - Winthrop

In addition to receiving a great overall score, this facility also earned first-rate inspections in recent years. We awarded it one of our higher grades in that category, with an A. Perhaps the most significant factor we consider in calculating our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher scores in this category typically avoided the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This tells you that the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A few minor deficiencies are not necessarily the end of the world.

This nursing home really excelled in the category of short-term care, where we awarded it a grade of A-. Few facilities performed more favorably in this category. With our short-term care rating, we strive to forge a sound measure for rehabilitation. In this process, we assess a nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

This facility received even higher grades in the area of nursing. In fact, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A-. Our nursing rating weighs several factors. The most important factor is the number of hours nurses spent with residents. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this facility 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 typically be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a system of moving patients at least once a day.

The final category we graded is long-term care, which turned out to be this facility's worst area. We gave this facility a D in that category. However, you should not assess this facility solely on a single weak area, since it was given a few very strong scores in other areas. For residents looking for a permanent residence as opposed to skilled nursing, long-term care grades are an important measure. Once we looked at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination data. We were optimistic to learn that this nursing home vaccinated 98.55072 percent of its patients for pneumonia. To our surprise, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility had fewer hospitalizations than many nursing homes. Sadly, some of its other scores in the category weren't as favorable as these.