Northridge Village

Northridge Village is located in Ames, Iowa, a city with a total of 62,905 people. This facility is among the highest-graded facilities we found. In fact, it received our absolute highest grade. In fact, we were so impressed with this facility that we rated it as the best facility in Ames. Headlining this nursing home's exemplary profile is its long-term care rating, which is addressed in the next paragraph.

In addition to receiving a great overall grade, this nursing home received an A+ in the area of long-term care. Nursing homes that receive this type of grade in this category tend to provide consistent 24/7 care to make sure patients are kept in good health. In addition to looking at the well above average level of care provided by nurses and other staff at this nursing home, we also were pleased by the facility's record for vaccinations. For example, this facility gave the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is an impressive figure. This combination proved to be effective as this nursing home also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had only 1.36 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days.

This facility also earned an A+ inspection score, making it one of the few nursing homes to receive multiple A+'s in our category grades. This score is based on the nursing home's inspections. Perhaps the most important factor we look at in computing our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Nursing homes with better scores in this category most likely avoided the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. While this facility had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its impressive resume, this nursing home also excelled in our nursing category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A for that category. We scrutinized the levels of nurses at the nursing home, in addition to the number of hours the nurses spent with residents, in computing our grade in this category. This nursing home provided 4.1 hours of nursing care per resident daily. This was one of the better totals we found. Furthermore, a significant percentage of this care was provided by registered nurses, which are highly skilled nurses. These are both really impressive figures. On top of offering impressive levels of care, this facility also excelled in several of the quality measures we looked at. With under 5 percent of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the country in this category. This is often a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Many pressure ulcers could be prevented by providing better nursing care and a policy of turning residents more often.

In our last area, we awarded this facility an A+ for our short-term care grade. This completed a very impressive profile. In the area of short-term care, we attempt to evaluate measures of a nursing home's rehabilitation. We analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses and various therapists. This nursing home elevated its score in this area by offering more care from registered nurses to its residents than the typical facility. Finally, we assessed the number of patients who were able to return home from this facility. It outperformed most facilities in the nation with 51.2 percent of its residents returning home. This is a higher rate than most facilities.