Iowa Lutheran Hospital

To go along with its favorable overall score, we gave this nursing home a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. Inspection grades are tied to several items located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that receive favorable grades in this area typically have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these places generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. Although this nursing home had some deficiencies on its inspection report, none of them were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. 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 nursing home was superb in our short-term care rating. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this area. Short-term care ratings are vital for residents in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates higher levels of skilled nursing. This includes a vast range of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility 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. Lastly, we considered the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 6.9 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

This facility also received a impressive long-term care grade. In fact, this is its third most impressive category grade. In that area, this facility received a score of A. For patients in need of a permanent residence as opposed to skilled nursing, long-term care grades are very important. One of the criteria we considered in addition to nurse's aid hours is vaccinations. It doesn't look like this facility submitted data regarding vaccinations. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

In our final category, this facility also received an excellent nursing rating, with an A. This rounded out a first-rate report card. Our nursing grade is based on many data points. The most heavily weighted one is the quantity of hours nurses spent with patients. This nursing home averages 0.7 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed certain nursing quality measures in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We look at these data points as reliable indicators of the caliber of nursing care provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.