Touchstone Healthcare Community

This nursing home received a solid overall grade as described above, but it really excelled in nursing care, with an impressive grade of A- in this category. We scrutinized the qualifications of nurses employed by the facility, in addition to the quantity of hours those nurses were with patients, in calculating our rating in this area. This nursing home provides 0 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at 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 frequently be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as having a system of moving a resident at least once a day.

Another one of this nursing home's more impressive category grades was in the area of short-term care. In that category, we gave this facility a B. In computing these short-term care grades, we look at the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The goal is to create a tool for comparing the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. It does not look like this nursing home provided data regarding its registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. The final metric we considered in this area is the number of patients that were able to return 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.

The third area we assessed was long-term care. In that category, we gave this facility a grade of B. It actually outpaced most facilities in this category. Long-term care scores in this range generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. Once we assessed the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 72.54902 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which happens to be a few points lower than we expected but still a respectable figure. Although its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we hoped for, at least this place was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

In the last category of inspections, this ended up being this nursing home's weakest link. Inspection grades are based on a facility's recent inspection reports. We gave this nursing home a score of D in this category, which is not a very good grade. Since this data is collected by independent inspectors, we take it seriously. Inspection scores weigh 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 nursing home was assessed one category G through L deficiency, which rank among the more severe categories of deficiencies. These categories indicate that the deficiencies identified by the government inspectors had the potential to create actual harm to patients. Lastly, we want to draw your attention to the fact that this place was assessed significant government fines recently totaling more than $100,000. This usually signifies that a facility's poor performance spanned multiple years.