Luther Memorial Home

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. Inspection ratings weigh a host of factors included in a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with better scores in this area generally have very few severe deficiencies. Although this place had a few deficiencies on its report, none of them were serious based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

One of the other reasons we rated this facility so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing grade. In fact, nursing proved to be its second best category grade. In that area, we awarded this facility an A. Nursing grades are heavily correlated with nurse staffing levels. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed very well in the area of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The third area we looked at is long-term care. Adding to its elite resume, this nursing home also excelled in that area. In fact, we awarded it a grade of of A for the category. When facilities receive this type of grade in this category it is usually a good sign for resident care and suggests that the nursing home is well-staffed with nurses aids. Once we finished looking at the volume of care provided by nurses, we next considered the facility's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 99.30314 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia can be a deadly health condition for nursing home patients so we prefer when a nursing home doesn't leave its residents vulnerable. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

In the final category, we awarded this facility an A+ for our short-term care score. This wrapped up a very strong report card. In the area of short-term care, we attempt to assess indicators of a facility's rehabilitation. We analyze a facility's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.