River Hills Village in Keokuk

With an overall grade this high, it should come as no surprise that this facility performed well in inspections, where it earned an A. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining our inspection grades. One key factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these can be relatively insignificant. This particular nursing home received 3 deficiencies on its inspection report. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also performed well in the area of long-term care, where we gave it a grade of A. Not many nursing homes performed better in this area. Nursing homes that excel in this category tend to provide patients with better supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. On top of looking at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia can be a deadly health condition for nursing home residents so we like it when a nursing home does not leave its residents vulnerable. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Turning our next category, this facility was given a top-shelf short-term care grade. In fact, it received a score of A- in this area. In crafting our short-term care ratings, we look at the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The purpose is to formulate a tool for comparing the rehabilitation services of different facilities. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 5.8 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

In our final area, this nursing home also was awarded an impressive nursing grade, with a B+. This rounded out a very favorable profile. The nursing score analyzes quite a few subcategories, many of which are tied to nursing hours. This facility provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as employing a protocol of turning a resident even once per day.