Shell Rock Senior Living

One of the reasons this ended up being a strong facility is that it received an impressive inspection score. In fact, inspections is its best category. In this area, we gave it an A-. Inspection scores are tied to items located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that receive favorable grades in this area tend to have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. While this place had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Remember that deficiency-free inspections are rare in this industry.

This facility received a very good nursing grade this year as well. It received one of our better scores in that category with a grade of B+. Our nursing rating is largely tied to the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 0 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics 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 nursing home Iowa in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as employing a policy of moving residents more often.

Turning to our third category, this nursing home also earned a grade of B for its short-term care rating. This is an above average grade in this area. In calculating our short-term care ratings, we look at a nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other highly trained professionals. This category is generally a meaningful assessment of a nursing home's rehabilitation. Unfortunately, we were not able to find information about this nursing home's registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. Lastly, we considered the number of patients who ultimately were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that it performed respectably in this area with 49.1 percent of its residents returning home.

The last category we analyzed was long-term care. For that category, we awarded this facility a C. In the category of long-term care, we analyze the amount of care provided by a facility, as opposed to more healthcare-oriented services. Once we finished looking at the amount of nursing care, we then looked at the facility's vaccination record. We were optimistic to discover that this nursing home vaccinates 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia. This nursing home was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.