Pocahontas Manor

We also would like to emphasize the fact that this facility excelled in our nursing grade. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. Nursing scores are tied to levels of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides an incredible 4.1 hours of nursing care per resident daily. Out of that total, many of those hours were provided by registered nurses, which is one of the most highly highly trained levels of nurses. In addition to offering high levels of nursing care, this facility also excelled in the quality measures we looked at. For example, it performed as well as any nursing home in Iowa in the area of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We look at these areas as reliable measures of the quality of nursing care offered.

This facility has received near flawless health inspections in recent years. We awarded them an impressive grade of A- in this category. Arguably the most critical factor we look at in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Nursing homes with better grades in this category typically dodged the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

The next category we assessed was long-term care. This nursing home was given an impressive long-term care grade, with a B+ in the area. Nursing homes that excel in long-term care typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to residents. On top of assessing the elite volume of care provided by nurses and other staff at this facility, we also were impressed by the facility's vaccination statistics. For example, this nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is very impressive. This combination proved to be successful as this facility keeps its patients out of the hospital. It had just 1.1 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a much better hospitalization rate than most nursing homes.

The last category we graded was short-term care. In this category, we gave this facility a strong grade of B. In the area of short-term care, we seek to evaluate indicators of a nursing home's rehabilitation. We analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. One of this nursing home's strengths is it provides more than an hour of care per day from registered nurses to each resident. This is really the gold standard in this metric, as it's roughly 1.5 times higher than a typical place's level of registered nurse staffing. The final item we assessed in this area is the number of residents who ultimately were able to return home from the facility. We found that it fared respectably with 47 percent of its patients returning home.