Good Samaritan Society - West Union

In addition to being a great overall grade, this facility also received A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. Inspection grades take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can find more information about each of these items by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Fortunately, although this place had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. We should point out that deficiency-free inspections are rare in the industry.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received an impressive grade of A- in our nursing category. Our nursing grade is mostly associated with the facility's nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at 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 place Iowa in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of moving patients more frequently.

Turning the page to our third category, we gave this facility a score of A- for its short-term care score. This is a very strong score. In computing these short-term care grades, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as 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 facilities. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last statistic we assessed in this category is the number of residents who were able to return home from the facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

The final area we looked at is long-term care, in which this facility was awarded a grade of B-. Although this proved to be its least impressive category rating, this is still not a major area of concern. Long-term care grades are based in part on the facility's quantity of care. This includes a vast range of personal care services, ranging from help with activities of daily living to routine healthcare services. Once we assessed the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 93.78882 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is a few points lower than we expected but still a respectable percentage. Nevertheless, this nursing home excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.