Lutheran Home

To pair with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for its nursing grade. Our short-term care grades are based in part on a nursing home's quantity of highly-skilled highly skilled professionals. This includes a wide scope of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final statistic we assessed in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that 6.7 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

Adding to its impressive category grades, this nursing home excelled in the area of inspections, where it earned an A. Not many nursing homes performed as well in this area. Inspection ratings weigh several factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One key criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with better grades in this category generally have very few of these severe deficiencies. This nursing home received 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none were considered to be major deficiencies. This indicates that the inspectors did not consider any of these deficiencies to cause an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

The third area we analyzed is long-term care. Adding to its elite resume, this facility also performed well in that category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of of A in that area. When facilities receive a grade in this range in long-term care it typically means it's well-staffed and is an overall good place to reside on a permanent basis. Once we assessed the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients out of the hospital. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

In the last area, this facility also was given an excellent nursing grade, with a grade of A-. This wrapped up a very favorable profile. There are several factors within this area. Most of the data points are tied to the quantity of nurse staffing. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by having a system of turning a patient even once per day.