Emmetsburg Care Center

In addition to being a great facility overall, it also received A+ inspections in recent years. Its inspections are virtually perfect. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining our inspection grades. One critical factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some end up being relatively insignificant. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as 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 safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received an impressive grade of A in our nursing category. Nursing grades are based in large part on quantity of nursing care available. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place Iowa in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by having a policy of moving a patient even once per day.

This facility also was awarded a dominant long-term care score. In fact, this turned out to be its third best category grade. In that category, this facility received a score of A-. In a long-term care setting, the nursing home's primary goal is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. Once we finished looking at the volume of care provided by nurses, we next considered the facility's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 84.9315 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Although its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we had hoped, at least this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

In the final category we scored, this nursing home received a very favorable grade of B+ in our short-term care category. With this score, the nursing home finished off a very favorable report card. In determining our short-term care grades, we analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The goal is to devise a barometer for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various facilities. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final statistic we assessed in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.