South Shore Care Center

South Shore Care Center is a small nursing home located in Worthington, Minnesota. This facility was given an overall rating of F. This place is really as bad as it gets. More information on this nursing home's category grades is available below. Its best category is nursing, which is discussed in the next section.

While we graded this facility incredibly poorly overall, it received a fairly respectable nursing grade this year. We gave it a grade of B- in that category. Nursing ratings are tied to nurse staffing levels. According to its CMS reports, this place provided an average of 3.9 hours of nursing care per patient per day, which was above the national average. Lastly, our nursing grades also factor in some quality-focused statistics. Specifically, we look at the percent of residents who sustained pressure ulcers and major falls. We look at these areas as good measures of the quality of nursing care, since better care tends to reduce these problems.

This nursing home also didn't grade out terribly in the category of short-term care. In fact, we gave it a B- for that category, which is another one of its higher scores. In the area of short-term care, we strive to evaluate indicators of a facility's rehabilitation. We analyze a facility's skilled nursing services, including the ones performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. 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 final statistic we considered in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. This place fared well in this metric with 56.3 percent of its residents returning home. At most nursing homes, less than half of their short-term residents are able to return home.

We were also pleasantly surprised to discover that this facility received a solid long-term care rating in our assessment. We awarded it a B- in that area. Long-term care scores are critical for patients requiring personal care. Although we determined this facility has a favorable volume of nursing hours provided by nurses and other nursing staff, we found its vaccine statistics to be somewhat below average. This facility gave the pneumonia vaccine to just 72.72727 percent of its residents. This is one statistic we'd really like to see this facility bring up. Nevertheless, this place was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This facility did not receive a favorable inspection rating. We gave it a just D in this category. Inspection grades relate to a nursing home's government inspections. We weight poor inspection ratings heavily in our assessment. Since the inspection reports are completed by independent government inspectors, we consider this information to be reliable. Inspection ratings factor in many items on the nursing home's inspection reports. When you see severe deficiencies on the reports, this is generally the worst sign. Severe deficiencies indicate a risk to patient safety. This nursing home was hit with 8 deficiencies by government inspectors. The only positive thing we can say is that none of its deficiencies were in the categories that suggest that they created a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, CMS cited this nursing home for possible abuse or neglect. Hopefully, its performance improves in the future, but until then we simply can't recommend this facility.