Good Shepherd Lutheran Home

In addition to receiving a great overall score, this nursing home excelled in nursing. We gave it an A for that area. The nursing score consists of a handful of factors, however, the most important consideration is the quantity of nurse hours spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics 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 Minnesota in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by having a policy of moving residents at least once a day.

Adding to its strong performance in other areas, we gave this facility a grade of A for its long-term care score. Long-term care grades of this caliber generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. After considering the amount of nursing care, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is very impressive. Pneumonia tragically can be a life threatening condition for nursing home residents so we like it when a facility doesn't roll the dice on this issue. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This facility has received near flawless health inspections in recent years. We awarded them an impressive grade of A- in this category. Our inspection scores are tied to datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that excel in this category tend to have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. While this nursing home 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 inspectors did not deem 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.

Switching gears to our fourth category, this nursing home received a strong short-term care score. Even though this is not nearly as impressive as many of its other scores, this remains one of the stronger grades we offer. In computing our short-term care ratings, we size up the facility's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other licensed professionals. This area is frequently a useful measure of a facility's rehabilitation. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the percentage of residents that returned home from this nursing home. We found that 5 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.