Sanford Health Sheldon Care Center

On top of being a first rate nursing home overall, this facility also excelled in nursing, where it earned a grade of A. Our nursing score is based on the facility's nurse staffing levels. We weigh both the levels of training of those nurses as well as the quantity of hours spent with residents. This nursing home averages 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed very well in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Adding to its impressive category grades, this facility excelled in the area of inspections, where it received an A-. Not many nursing homes performed better in this area. Arguably the most important factor we consider in determining our inspection grades is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Facilities with better scores in this area typically avoided the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This facility received 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe. This means that the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies to create an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A few relatively minor dings are not necessarily the end of the world.

The third category we graded is short-term care. This facility was awarded an impressive short-term care grade, with a B+ in the area. In calculating these short-term care scores, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The purpose is to create a barometer for sizing up the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final metric we considered in this area is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We discovered that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.

The final area we rated was long-term care. This nursing home was given a strong nursing rating in our assessment, with a grade of B. Even though this was not as good as a few of its other category grades, this remains one of the better scores in that category. Long-term care grades of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. In addition to looking at the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 96.21622 percent of its residents, which is higher than the average nursing home. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.