Good Samaritan Society - Postville

In addition to receiving an elite overall grade, this facility received an A+ inspection rating. This score is based on the facility's recent government inspections. An A+ in this area is one of the highest complements we can pay to a facility. Inspection scores weigh several factors, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these items by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This nursing home was hit with 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered to be major deficiencies. This indicates that the inspectors didn't deem any of these deficiencies an imminent risk to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Among this nursing home's other accomplishments is its dominant long-term care grade. It received one of our most favorable grades in that category, with a score of A-. When facilities receive a score in this range in long-term care it generally means it has plenty of staff and is an overall good place to reside on a permanent basis. In addition to considering the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 94.80519 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 its residents vulnerable. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The third category we assessed was short-term care. This facility received an impressive short-term care grade, with a B in the category. In our short-term care score, we seek to forge a sound gauge for rehabilitation. In doing so, we analyze a nursing home's level of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we considered the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

The final category we looked at is nursing. In that category, we gave this nursing home a favorable grade of B. We scrutinized the skill-level of nurses working for the nursing home, as well as the quantity of time those nurses spent with patients, in calculating our rating in this area. This nursing home averages 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of moving residents at least once a day.