Strawberry Point Lutheran Home

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. Arguably the most important factor we look at in calculating our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with better scores in this area typically avoided the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This nursing home was hit with 6 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered severe. This indicates that CMS did not deem any of these deficiencies to create an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

One of the other reasons we rated this nursing home so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing score. In fact, nursing proved to be its second best category grade. In that area, we gave this nursing home an A. The nursing rating consists of several factors, most of which are tied to levels of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed very well when it comes to avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Turning our next area, this facility received a strong long-term care score. In fact, we awarded it a score of A in that area. Long-term care scores of this caliber generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. In addition to considering the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home provided the vaccine to 92.15686 percent of its patients. This is a few points below what we expected but still a decent percentage. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Turning to our final area, this facility received an excellent short-term care rating. In fact, we gave it a B+ in this category, finishing off one of our more impressive report cards. In computing our short-term care ratings, we assess the facility's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other highly trained professionals. This score is often a solid measure of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last metric we considered in this area is the percentage of patients who ultimately returned home from the nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.