Columbia Lutheran Home

We also want to emphasize that this facility excelled in our nursing category. We gave them an A+ in this category. Our nursing rating is largely tied to the facility's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.5 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 frequently be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as having a system of turning residents even once per day.

This facility also was given a fine short-term care score. In fact, this turned out to be this facility's second most impressive category grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A. In calculating these short-term care ratings, we analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our purpose is to devise a measure for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final item we considered in this area is the number of patients who ultimately returned home from the facility. We found that 6 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

Building on its fine profile, this facility also was given an excellent long-term care score, with a score of A-. Long-term care ratings of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. In addition to assessing the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 99.565216 percent of its residents, which is far higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Finally, we wanted to emphasize this facility's nearly flawless inspections in recent years. We awarded them a B+ in this category. This finishes off a very strong report card. Inspection grades are based on many data points found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that score well in this category have few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. This facility was hit with 7 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered severe. This tells you that CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies to cause an immediate threat to patient safety or health. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe made us feel better about this inspection report.