Fellowship Village

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it received an A+ long-term care grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in long-term care it typically means it has plenty of staff and is an overall good place to reside on a permanent basis. On top of considering the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia sadly is often a life threatening ailment for nursing home residents so we prefer when a facility doesn't leave its residents vulnerable. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Adding to this facility's impressive resume, we gave this facility an A for inspections. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing these inspection grades. One key factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these end up being quite minor. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This tells you 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.

This facility also excelled in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of A. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. When determining our nursing scores, we analyze both staffing levels and the skill levels of those nurses. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics 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 Iowa in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by having a system of turning a resident at least once a day.

Switching gears to our next category, this nursing home received an excellent short-term care score. We gave it a grade of A in that category, rounding out a straight A profile. In the area of short-term care, we attempt to qualify indicators of a facility's rehabilitation services. We look at the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses and physical therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final item we looked at in this category is the number of residents that eventually returned home from the nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.