St Johns Lutheran Home

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a great facility is that it earned a very impressive long-term care grade. This ended up being its best grade. In this area, we gave this facility an impressive grade of A. Nursing homes that receive this kind of grade in long-term care typically provide consistent 24/7 care to ensure patients are well cared for. In addition to assessing the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 98.31933 percent of its residents, which is much higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

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. Nursing grades are primarily tied to a facility's nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as employing a policy of moving a resident even once per day.

Turning our next area, this facility received a strong short-term care score. In fact, it received a score of A- in that category. In computing our short-term care ratings, we analyze the nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other licensed professionals. This score is often a solid assessment of the nursing home's ability to rehabilitate patients. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

Building on its other impressive category grades, we awarded this nursing home a B+ for its inspection score. Inspection grades weigh several factors, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can find more information about each of these factors by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Fortunately, although this place had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G through L. This means the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.