The Vinton Lutheran Home

On top of being a quality facility overall, this place really excelled in our inspections category, where it received an A-. Few nursing homes fared better in this area. Perhaps the most significant factor we consider in determining our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a facility's inspection reports. Places with better scores in this area most likely dodged the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. While this nursing home had some deficiencies on its inspection report, none were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. Remember that deficiency-free inspections are rare in this industry.

We also awarded this nursing home a grade of A- for our nursing grade. Nursing ratings are primarily based on the facility's nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

This facility performed well in the area of long-term care also. As a result, we gave it a score of A- for that area, which is one of our most favorable scores. Nursing homes that receive this kind of grade in this category typically provide consistent around the clock care to make sure patients are well cared for. Once we looked at the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 96.77419 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Vaccines are critical to keeping residents out of the hospital. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

The next category we analyzed is short-term care. In that category, we awarded this nursing home an impressive grade of B. Short-term care scores are meaningful for residents needing rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically requires additional skilled nursing services. This includes a wide range of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Unfortunately, we were not able to find information about this nursing home's registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of patients who ultimately returned home from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.