Lutheran Home

In addition to performing well overall, this facility received nearly flawless government inspections. Consequently, it received one of our highest grades in that area with an A+. Arguably the most important factor we consider in calculating our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher grades in this area most likely avoided the most severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. While this place had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the government inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also would like to alert you to the fact that this facility was awarded a first-rate score of A in our short-term care category. In crafting our short-term care scores, we analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our goal is to formulate a barometer for comparing the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the percentage of patients who ultimately returned home from this nursing home. We found that 5.6 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

This nursing home also received a very impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A. Our nursing rating assesses several factors, however, the paramount consideration is the level of nurse hours per patient per week. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by having a protocol of moving residents even once per day.

In the final category we analyzed, this facility received a very favorable grade of A in our long-term care category. With this score, the facility completed a straight A report card. Nursing homes that do well in long-term care typically provide patients with better supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. One of the factors we considered after nursing hours was vaccinations. This facility provided the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. Vaccination is a reliable method to avoid unnecessary hospitalizations for the nursing home population. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.