Mayo Clinic Health System - Lake City

Mayo Clinic Health System - Lake City is the sole option we found in Lake City, Minnesota. Sporting an overall grade of A-, this facility is ranked among the better nursing homes we assessed. In fact, we ranked this nursing home in the top third of all nursing homes in the United States. The best part of this facility's strong report card was its inspection rating. We discuss inspections in the next section

With an overall grade this high, it should come as no surprise that this facility performed well in the area of inspections, where it received an A. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining these inspection grades. One critical factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some can be relatively minor. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This means that the government inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. We should note that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in the industry.

Adding to its elite assessments in other areas, we awarded this facility a grade of A for its short-term care score. Our short-term care ratings are crucial for patients looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually mandates more highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means a wide range of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other types of therapy. One of this nursing home's strengths is registered nurse hours. We found that it offers more care from registered nurses to its residents than most facilities. The last item we assessed in this category is the number of patients who ultimately were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that it performed as well as just about any nursing home in Minnesota with 60.6 percent of its patients returning home.

This facility also excelled in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of A-. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. There are several subcategories included in this grade. Many of these subcategories reflect levels of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides an impressive 4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, this nursing home also performed well in several of the quality measures we assessed. By way of illustration, in terms of the number of its residents suffering from pressure ulcers, this place performed better than the national average. This is generally an indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Pressure ulcers can generally be prevented with better nursing care and having a policy of regularly turning residents to avoid bed sores.

The next area we rated was long-term care. In that area, we gave this nursing home a decent grade of B-. This was this nursing home's worst area. In crafting our long-term care scores, we quantify the facility's personal care services. After assessing the impressive nursing hours provided by this facility, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 99.631 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is higher than most nursing homes. This combination proved to be successful as this place was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0.53 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.