New London Specialty Care

Located in New London, Iowa, New London Specialty Care is the only option we identified in this area. Sporting an overall score of B-, this is likely a solid facility. This place has some things going for it. The best part of this place's profile was its stellar inspection grade. We discuss inspections in the next paragraph.

In addition to being a respectable facility overall, this facility really excelled in the category of inspections, where it received an A+. Few facilities performed better in this area. Inspection ratings account for several factors included in a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we consider is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher grades in this category typically have very few of these severe deficiencies. This place was hit with 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe. This means that the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies to pose an imminent risk to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also performed well in the category of long-term care, where it received a grade of A. Very few nursing homes performed better in this area. Facilities that excel in this category typically are well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to residents. After looking at the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia. Vaccines are critical to keeping patients out of the hospital. This place was also able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 1.36 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days.

This facility's second lowest score is short-term care, where it earned just a D in that area. This is a relatively poor score. Our short-term care grades are probably more important for individuals needing rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation usually utilizes more skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means not just nursing, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. It looks like this place was below average in multiple staffing metrics we assessed. In fact, it offered fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of residents that were able to return home from this nursing home. This facility didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 34.9 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

Moving on to our fourth area, this nursing home didn't fare very well. With a rock bottom grade of F in nursing, this was this nursing home's weakest category. There are quite a few data points included in this grade. Most of the subcategories relate to nurse staffing. This facility averaged just 3.2 hours of nursing care per resident each day. This statistic is significantly below the national average. In addition to its below average nursing hours, this facility earned poor marks in some of the quality-based measures we looked at in computing our nursing ratings. We found that more of this facility's patients suffered falls which led to serious injury.