Lone Tree Health Care Center

Lone Tree Health Care Center is the only facility we found in Lone Tree, Iowa. Sporting an overall rating of A-, this nursing home is among the better facilities we assessed. We were so impressed with this facility that we ranked it in the top quarter of all facilities nationally. The best part of this nursing home's strong profile is its inspection score. Inspection grades are discussed in the next section

On top of being a first rate facility overall, this nursing home performed well in our inspections category, where it earned an A+. Very few places performed this well in this category. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining these inspection grades. One key factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some can be quite minor. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G through L. This tells you that the government inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in this industry.

Contributing to its strong resume, this facility also excelled in our short-term care category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A- for that category. In the area of short-term care, we strive to evaluate measures of a facility's rehabilitation services. We assess a nursing home's skilled nursing services, including the ones performed by registered nurses and physical therapists. This nursing home employs both physical therapists and registered nurses. Not all facilities employ these skilled professionals. The last datapoint we considered in this area is the number of patients that were able to return home from the nursing home. It performed as well as just about any facility in Iowa in this area with 56.5 percent of its patients returning home. With most facilities, fewer than half of their short-stay residents are able to return home.

In addition, this facility also received favorable nursing grades this year. In fact, we awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B+. There are numerous factors within this grade. Many of the subcategories relate to nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 3.2 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 metrics as predictive indicators of the caliber of nursing care offered, since better care tends to reduce these problems.

In our last category, this facility also was given an excellent long-term care score, with a B+. This rounded out a very strong profile. Facilities that receive this type of score in this category tend to provide consistent around the clock care to make sure patients are well cared for. After assessing the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 99.17355 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is far higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. The last datapoint we assessed is the facility's hospitalization rate. We found that this nursing home had 2.16 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days.