Good Samaritan Society - St. Vincent's

The main reason this nursing home received a decent overall grade is its impeccable government inspections in recent years. We gave them one of our higher grades in that category, with an A-. This is a much better score than the place's overall score, which was decent but not in the elite range. Inspection grades weigh a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher scores in this category usually have few severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this place had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G through L. This tells you the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. We should point out that deficiency-free inspections are uncommon in the industry.

This nursing home also received a strong grade in our nursing category. We awarded this nursing home an above average grade of B+ in this area. Our nursing grade is mostly associated with a nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics 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 many times be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by having a system of moving residents more often.

The third category we looked at was short-term care. In that area, we awarded this facility a decent grade of B-. Short-term care grades are commonly employed to assess a nursing home's rehabilitation services In order to offer quality rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must offer higher levels of skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other highly skilled individuals. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 3.7 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most nursing homes, closer to half of their patients are able to return home so this figure is below average.

The last area we scored was long-term care. In this category, we awarded this facility a C. Long-term care grades are based in part on a nursing home's amount of nursing care. This includes a vast scope of personal care services, ranging from help with activities of daily living to routine medical services. In addition to looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 97.16088 percent of its residents, which is higher than the average nursing home. Finally, this place was also able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.