Lake Minnetonka Care Center

On top of performing well in its overall score, this nursing home received a strong nursing grade. In fact, we gave it an A in that area. Nursing grades are primarily based on a facility's nurse staffing. This facility provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can many times be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Contributing to its superb profile, this facility also excelled in our long-term care category. In fact, we gave it a grade of A for that category. Nursing homes that receive this type of score in this category tend to provide consistent around the clock care to make sure patients are well cared for. On top of considering the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 97.10145 percent of its patients. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents healthy. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

We also wanted to emphasize this facility's nearly flawless government inspections in recent years. We gave them an impressive grade of B+ in this category. Perhaps the most critical factor we look at in determining our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher scores in this category typically dodged the most severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. Although this nursing home had a few deficiencies on its report, none of them were major deficiencies based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Turning to our fourth category, this nursing home also performed well in the short-term care category. We awarded it a grade of B+ in that area. This rounded out a first-rate profile. Our short-term care grades are probably most meaningful for those in need of rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation typically mandates higher levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes not only nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final statistic we assessed in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.