Lutheran Haven Nursing Home

This nursing home received an elite short-term care score. In fact, we gave this facility an impressive grade of A in this category, which really helped out its overall grade. Our short-term care ratings are crucial for prospective residents seeking rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally requires more highly-skilled nursing. This includes a broad range of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other types of therapy. It does not look like this nursing home submitted registered nurse or physical therapist staffing data. The last item we assessed in this category is the percentage of residents that ultimately returned home from the nursing home. We found that 5.7 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

One of the other reasons we rated this facility so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing score. In fact, nursing turned out to be its second best category grade. In that category, we gave this nursing home an B+. Our nursing grade weighs quite a few factors, most of which are associated with levels of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed very well in the area of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

This facility was awarded its next best category grade in the category of long-term care. We gave this facility a grade of B- in this category, which is a respectable grade. In a long-term care setting, the facility's primary goal is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. In addition to looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. We were not able to track down this place's vaccination data. Finally, this place excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

In the final category of inspections, we gave this facility a grade of just D for our inspection category. This proved to be its worst category grade, particularly in light of some of the more impressive scores discussed above. Nevertheless, since the inspection data is compiled by an independent government inspector, we weight it heavily in our overall grade. Inspection grades factor in many items on the nursing home's inspection reports. If you find too many deficiencies on the inspection reports, this is typically a bad sign. Severe deficiencies indicate a risk to the well being of residents. This particular facility had 2 deficiencies by government inspectors. The only favorable thing we can say is that none of the deficiencies were in the categories that suggest that they posed a risk to patient health or safety. Lastly, we also need to draw your attention to the fact that this nursing home received large government fines recently of more than $100,000. This generally suggests that a facility's bad track record spanned several years.