Stewartville Care Center

While this facility's overall grade wasn't a highlight, it actually received a decent grade in nursing. We awarded it a B- for that category. Our nursing rating features numerous subcategories. The most heavily weighted factor is the number of hours nurses spent with patients. This facility provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident each day. This is a lower figure than we are used to seeing. Lastly, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics. Although this nursing home got dinged a bit for nursing hours, it excelled in a few of these quality-based metrics. With less than five percent of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, it did well in this area. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by having a protocol of turning a patient at least once a day.

We also gave this nursing home a respectable score in the category of short-term care, where we awarded it a grade of B-. In calculating our short-term care grades, we size up a facility's levels of highly skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other highly trained professionals. This rating is more often than not a useful assessment of the nursing home's ability to rehabilitate patients. In this facility's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per patient than a typical facility. The hope is that this does not adversely affect the quality of care. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of residents that ultimately returned home from this facility. We found that 5.7 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was well below the national average.

This facility's next best category was its long-term care score, where it was given a grade of B-. With our long-term care category, we assess the volume of services offered by a facility, along with a handful of quality measures. After we finished assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses, we then looked at the facility's vaccination records. We were pleased to find that this facility vaccinated 99.354836 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Lastly, this place was also able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Unfortunately, this facility did not receive a favorable inspection grade. We gave it just a just D in this category. Inspection grades relate to a facility's inspection reports. We weight poor inspection scores heavily in our assessment. Since the inspections are compiled by independent government inspectors, we consider this information to be very reliable. Our inspection scores account for a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One key criteria we weigh heavily is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. This particular facility was assessed 6 deficiencies by government inspectors. The only favorable thing we found is that none of its deficiencies were in the categories that indicate they caused a risk to resident health or safety. Finally, CMS flagged this nursing home for possible abuse or neglect. This is not what you want to see. We advise you to direct your search elsewhere.