Columbia Lutheran Home

On top of earning a great overall grade, this nursing home also received an excellent short-term care grade, with an impressive grade of A. With our short-term care score, we endeavor to forge a valuable barometer for rehabilitation services. In doing so, we look at a facility's scope of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last measure we looked at in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that 6.4 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.

This nursing home also received a fine long-term care score. Indeed, this is this nursing home's second strongest category score. In that category, this facility received a score of A. When facilities receive a score in this range in long-term care it typically means it's well-staffed and is an overall good place to live on a permanent basis. Once we looked at the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is much higher than most nursing homes. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

We awarded this facility an A for our inspections rating. Inspection ratings are based on several datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that receive favorable grades in this category tend to have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these facilities should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. While this facility had a few deficiencies on its report, none of them were serious based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

The next category we analyzed proved to be this facility's worst category. However, even its weakest link would be a strength for many nursing homes. We awarded it an above average grade of B in our nursing category. Our nursing grade looks at the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We weigh both the levels of licensure of the nurses as well as the quantity of hours spent with patients. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at some quality-based measures in this category. This facility fared well in some of the quality-based metrics we assessed. By way of illustration, in terms of the number of its residents suffering from pressure ulcers, this facility performed better than the national average. This is generally an indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided with better nursing care.