Pelican Valley Health Center

In addition to a phenomenal overall grade, this facility also received A+ nursing grade. We analyzed the qualifications of nurses employed by the nursing home, as well as the quantity of hours those nurses spent with patients, in computing our score in this category. This nursing home averages 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures 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 place Minnesota in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by employing a system of turning residents more frequently.

This facility has also received near flawless health inspections in recent years. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. Perhaps the most critical factor we consider in determining our inspection grades is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher scores in this area typically avoided the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. Fortunately, although this nursing home had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G through L. This tells you that CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A few minor dings are not necessarily something to panic about.

This facility also was awarded a impressive short-term care score. Indeed, this ended up being this facility's third most impressive category score. In that area, this facility received a score of A. With our short-term care rating, we try to craft a sound measure for rehabilitation services. In this process, we analyze the facility's scope of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last measure we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We found that 5.5 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

The final area we looked at was long-term care, where this nursing home was awarded a grade of B+. This topped off a very strong profile. Very few nursing homes earned a B+ or better in each of our categories. In a long-term care environment, the nursing home'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 residents. One of the data points we considered in addition to nursing hours is vaccines. This facility administered the pneumonia vaccination to 85.43689 percent of its residents. Although its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we like to see, we were pleased to find facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.