Good Shepherd Care Center

One of the reasons this ended up being a quality nursing home is that it received a very impressive inspection rating. In fact, inspections turned out to be its best category grade. In this area, we gave this facility an A. These inspection scores weigh several factors, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these issues by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. While this facility had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that the inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Another one of this facility's above average category scores came in the category of long-term care. We awarded them one of our more positive grades in that category, with a grade of B+. When facilities receive a score in this range in long-term care it typically means it has plenty of staff and is a quality place to reside on a permanent basis. On top of considering the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 96.9163 percent of its residents, which is higher than the average nursing home. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

We also awarded this nursing home a middle of the pack score in the area of short-term care, where we awarded it a grade of B-. Short-term care grades are typically employed to judge a facility's performance with rehabilitation To have highly rated rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must offer higher levels of skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other types of therapists. It doesn't appear that this nursing home submitted data regarding its registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. The last statistic we considered in this category is the number of patients who ultimately were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that just 4.9 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

Moving on to our next area, this facility was given a B- in nursing, which is generally a respectable rating. There are a host of data points included in this area. Most of the factors are tied to nurse staffing. This nursing home provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This is a relatively low total compared with most other facilities. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours per resident, this facility performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is often a reliable indicator that a facility has sufficient quality controls in place. Many falls can be avoided if a facility provides enough nurses aids to assist its patients.