Dunlap Specialty Care

Dunlap Specialty Care is a small non-profit nursing home in Dunlap, Iowa. This nursing home turns out to be a very respectable facility, with an overall grade of B. Based on our assessment, this nursing home ought to meet the needs of most people. The best aspect of this facility's impressive profile is its inspection reports. We discuss inspections in the next section

In addition to performing well in its overall grade, this facility performed at an even higher level in the area of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A. Arguably the most critical factor we consider in determining our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Facilities with higher grades in this area typically dodged the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. While this place had a few deficiencies on its inspection report, none were major deficiencies based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also awarded this facility a grade of A for our long-term care score. When facilities receive this type of score in this category it is a good sign for patient care and indicates that the place is well-staffed with nurses and aids. In addition to considering the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is very impressive. Pneumonia tragically can be a dangerous condition for nursing home patients so we prefer when a nursing home does not leave this to chance. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 1.26 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility had less hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes.

Turning to the category of nursing care, this facility didn't perform quite as well in this area as some of the categories discussed above. Nevertheless, a grade of B- in this category is by no means a bad score. There are quite a few criteria within this area. Most of these criteria relate to levels of nurse staffing. This facility averages 2.9 hours of nursing care per patient per day, which is not an impressive total. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics. Although this place got dinged a bit for nursing hours, it excelled in a few of these quality-based metrics. With fewer than five percent of its patients sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed remarkably well in this area. This can be an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as having a system of turning a patient even once per day.

This nursing home's weakest area was short-term care, which is the last area we looked at. We gave it a lowly F for this category. In spite of a few strong grades in other areas, this grade is nevertheless somewhat disappointing so we would like to to point it out. In our short-term care assessment, we strive to create a fair barometer for rehabilitation. In doing so, we look at the nursing home's level of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. In this nursing home's case, we found that it provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. Finally, we looked at the number of patients who ultimately returned home from this facility. This nursing home didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 26.7 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.