Scottish Rite Park

On top of being a first rate facility overall, this facility also performed well in the area of inspections, where it received a grade of A+. Few places performed this well in this category. Perhaps the most significant factor we look at in calculating our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Facilities with higher scores in this area typically dodged the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This facility was assessed 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered severe. This indicates that the inspectors didn't deem any of these deficiencies to cause an immediate risk to resident health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also was awarded an A+ short-term care grade, rendering it one of the few facilities to be awarded multiple A+ category grades. Our short-term care grade is generally employed to score a nursing home's rehabilitation services. In order to provide good rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally need to provide better levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other types of therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last item we assessed in this category is the number of patients who returned home from the facility. We found that 6.3 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

Among its many impressive grades, this facility received an excellent nursing grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of A in that category. Nursing grades are based largely on quality and quantity of nursing care. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this place excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place Iowa 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 policy of turning a patient more frequently.

In the final area, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for its long-term care score. This wrapped up a very impressive profile. Facilities that receive this kind of score in long-term care typically provide consistent 24/7 care to make sure patients are well cared for. One of the data points we considered after nursing hours is vaccinations. This facility administered the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccination is a great way to minimize unnecessary hospitalizations for the elderly population. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.