Silver Bay Veterans Home Earns National Recognition for Eighth Straight Year

The Minnesota Veterans Home in Silver Bay has now claimed the Activated Insights Customer Experience Award eight consecutive years, a streak that places the Lake Superior shoreline facility among the most consistently recognized long-term-care providers in the country.

The recognition comes from Activated Insights, formerly known as Pinnacle Quality Insight, a national benchmarking firm that conducts roughly 112,000 personal telephone interviews each year with residents, patients, and family members at more than 1,800 participating care providers. Only facilities scoring at the 85th percentile or higher nationally, across 12 to 16 service categories including nursing care, dining, cleanliness, communication, and therapy services, receive the Customer Experience Award. Silver Bay has cleared that bar every year since at least 2019.

The 2026 round of awards also marked a broader milestone for the Minnesota Department of Veterans Affairs: seven of its skilled nursing facilities received the honor this year, up from the four recognized consistently since 2022. The homes in Fergus Falls, Luverne, and Minneapolis joined Silver Bay as returning recipients, while the Preston Veterans Home earned the distinction in its very first year of eligibility after opening in 2024. "These Activated Insights survey results validate the overall quality our Homes provide to our Residents," the department said in connection with the 2026 awards.

Silver Bay's underlying numbers reinforce the honor. The facility holds 54 CMS-certified beds and carries a 5-star overall rating from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, placing it in the top 10 percent of all CMS-reviewed facilities nationally. It participates in both Medicare and Medicaid and offers 24-hour nursing, rehabilitation services, memory care, behavioral health support, chaplain services, and pharmaceutical services.

The physical design sets it apart from traditional institutional nursing homes. Rather than a conventional floor-and-wing layout, the Silver Bay home is organized into four distinct households, each with its own living room, kitchen, and dining area. That small-household model has been associated with improved resident well-being compared to standard nursing home configurations.

The facility opened in 1991 on the North Shore, meaning it has offered continuous care to veterans from across northeastern Minnesota for more than three decades. Lake County lists it among the region's key health and human services resources, citing services that are otherwise difficult to access in a rural corridor where health-care options are limited and direct-care staffing remains a persistent challenge.

Eight consecutive awards across a national pool of 1,800 providers is a threshold few rural, state-operated facilities clear year after year. For veterans and families weighing long-term care options on the North Shore, the streak offers a concrete benchmark: Silver Bay has ranked in the top 15 percent nationally every year for the better part of a decade.