Mount Ayr Health Care Center

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this facility an A+ for inspections. Inspection ratings account for a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher grades in this area usually have few of these severe deficiencies. This nursing home was hit with 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered to be severe. This indicates that the inspectors did not deem any of these deficiencies an immediate risk to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

To add to its high-end achievements in other areas, we gave this facility a score of A- for its short-term care score. Short-term care grades are based on a nursing home's quantity of skilled nursing services. This means a vast spectrum of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, not to mention other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home 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. The last metric we looked at in this category is the number of residents that 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 nursing home on a permanent basis.

Adding to its profile, this facility also earned a grade of B+ for its nursing rating. This is a well above average score in this category. The nursing rating is based on many subcategories, but the main consideration is the quantity of nurse hours per patient per week. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics 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 nursing home the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as employing a system of moving a resident at least once a day.

In the last area, we gave this facility a grade of A+ for our long-term care score. This completed a very favorable report card. Nursing homes that do well in long-term care typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to patients. After considering the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is much higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.