Regency Park Nursing & Rehab Center of Carroll

Regency Park Nursing & Rehab Center of Carroll is one of only three available facilities in Carroll, Iowa. It looks like this is a fine facility. We awarded it an overall grade of B, which is a respectable rating. You can certainly do much worse than this facility. Finally, we wanted to point out that there was an ownership change at this facility in the last 12 months. We will need to make sure it maintains its high grades going forward.

In addition to being a quality facility overall, this place really excelled in our inspections category, where it earned a grade of A+. Few facilities performed better in that category. Inspection scores weigh a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher grades in this category tend to have very few of these severe deficiencies. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

One of the other reasons we rated this nursing home so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing grade. This turned out to be its second best category grade. In that area, we awarded this nursing home a grade of B+. In determining a facility's nursing score, we weigh the quantity of hours nurses are seeing patients and the level of licensure of the nurses. This nursing home provides 3.8 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This facilities next most favorable category is short-term care. We awarded it a B- in this area. This is basically a middle of the pack score in this area. In computing our short-term care grades, we assess a facility's levels of skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other highly skilled individuals. This rating is considered to be a fair measure of a facility's rehabilitation. 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. The final metric we assessed in this area is the number of residents who returned home from the nursing home. We found that just 42.7 percent of this facility's patients returned home. Unfortunately, this was below average.

The next category we graded is long-term care, which turned out to be this nursing home's weakest area. We gave this facility a grade of D in this area. Unfortunately, this score pulled down the nursing home's overall profile a bit. For prospective residents seeking a permanent place to live rather than rehabilitation, long-term care grades are a key measure. On top of assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. To our surprise, this nursing home was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.95 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. Sadly, a few of its other scores in this category were not as favorable as these.