The Lutheran Home

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. Our inspection scores are based on several datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that excel in this area typically have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. Fortunately, although this place had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Among its many impressive grades, this facility was given an excellent long-term care grade. In fact, we gave it a score of A in that area. Nursing homes that excel in this category typically are well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to residents. Once we finished looking at the quantity of nursing care, we then looked at the facility's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 98.36601 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia sadly can be a dangerous ailment for nursing home patients so we like it when a nursing home doesn't leave its residents vulnerable. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This facility also excelled in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of A. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. Our nursing rating is largely tied to the facility's nurse staffing. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this place 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 country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of moving patients more often.

In the last category, this nursing home also received an impressive short-term care score, with an A-. This rounded out an elite report card. With our short-term care category, we endeavor to craft a valuable measure for rehabilitation services. In doing so, we analyze a facility's scope of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 4.7 percent of this facility's patients returned home.