Mason City Area Nursing Home

On top of being a strong facility overall, this facility especially excelled in our inspections category, where it earned an A+. Not many nursing homes performed better in that area. Arguably the most critical factor we look at in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Facilities with higher scores in this category most likely dodged the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. While this facility had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were severe based on CMS' scale. We should note that deficiency-free inspections are rare in this industry.

This facility received a very good nursing grade this year as well. It received one of our better scores in that category with a grade of B. Our nursing score weighs quite a few subcategories, however, the most important consideration is the quantity of nurse hours per patient per week. This particular nursing home provided 3.2 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at certain nursing quality measures in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We look at these areas as predictive indicators of the quality of nursing care provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.

The third area we analyzed was short-term care. This facility was given a very positive short-term care grade, with a B in this category. In the area of short-term care, we endeavor to qualify measures of a facility's rehabilitation. We analyze a nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical therapists. We were pleased to find that this nursing home employs both registered nurses and physical therapists. The same can't be said for all nursing homes. Lastly, we assessed the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. This proved to be a real strength for this facility. This place outperformed the vast majority of facilities in this area with 58.7 percent of its residents returning home. This is a substantially higher rate than most facilities.

The next category we looked at was long-term care. This facility was given a B- for the area. In a long-term care environment, the facility's primary objective is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. In addition to looking at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. Lastly, this facility was also able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.97 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.