Lutheran Care Center

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. Inspection scores weigh several factors, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these issues by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This tells you the inspectors didn't 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.

Adding to its top-shelf assessment, this nursing home also received a dominant long-term care grade, with a score of A. Facilities that receive this type of grade in long-term care tend to provide consistent around the clock care to make sure residents are well cared for. On top of assessing the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia tragically can be a deadly health condition for nursing home patients so we like it when a facility does not roll the dice on this issue. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Adding to its impressive resume, this nursing home also excelled in our nursing category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A- for that category. When determining a nursing home's nursing rating, we weigh the number of hours nurses are caring for residents as well as the level of skill of those nurses. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed very well in terms of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The last category we scored is short-term care. In this category, we awarded this nursing home an acceptable grade of B-. This turned out to be this nursing home's weakest area. Our short-term care scores are considered to be most critical for patients needing rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation generally mandates higher levels of skilled nursing services. This includes not just nursing, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final statistic we assessed in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to return home from the facility. We found that just 3.3 percent of this facility's residents returned home.