Benedictine Living Community - Ellendale

On top of being a first rate facility overall, this facility also excelled in our inspections category, where it received an A+. Very few facilities performed this well in this category. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining our inspection scores. One critical factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some are relatively insignificant. Although this facility had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also received a strong long-term care grade. This actually turned out to be this nursing home's second strongest category score. In that area, we awarded this facility a score of A. Nursing homes that excel in long-term care tend to be well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to residents. In addition to considering the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents healthy. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Adding to its impressive resume, this nursing home also excelled in our nursing category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A for that category. Our nursing grade is based on a handful of datapoints, many of which are associated with levels of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can many times be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Switching gears to our last category, this facility also excelled in our short-term care category. We gave it a grade of A- in this category. This finalized a straight A report card. In the category of short-term care, we try to qualify indicators of a facility's rehabilitation services. We look at the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and physical and occupational therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final measure we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.