Walnut Cove Health and Rehabilitation Center

The main reason this facility received a decent overall score is its impeccable health inspections in recent years. We awarded it one of our better grades in that category, with an A. This is a much better score than the facility's overall grade, which was decent but certainly not elite. Inspection grades take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these items by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This facility was hit with 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none of the deficiencies were considered to be major deficiencies. This tells you that CMS did not deem any of these deficiencies to create an immediate threat to patient health or safety. A couple of minor deficiencies shouldn't lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

This facilities next most favorable area was long-term care. We gave it a B- in this category. This is essentially a middle of the road grade in this category. Long-term care grades are vital for people looking for personal care. In addition to considering the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 96.1165 percent of its patients, which is more than the vast majority of nursing homes. This facility was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This nursing home's second lowest category is short-term care, where it received just a D in that area. This is a relatively poor score. In crafting these short-term care scores, we assess the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The purpose is to devise a measure for comparing the rehabilitation services of various facilities. Not surprisingly, we found that this nursing home provides far less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that just 3.2 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

The next area we rated is nursing, which ended up being this nursing home's worst area. Sadly, it received an F in this area, which is obviously very disappointing. Nursing grades are heavily correlated with levels of nurse staffing. This place provided a meager 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis. This is well below average. On top of ranking below average in nursing hours per resident, this nursing home also had poor marks in the quality-based measures we looked at in computing our nursing ratings. We looked at the percent of residents experiencing pressure ulcers and major falls. This facility was at about 1.5 times the national average in both of these metrics. This is likely a bad sign when you consider that many falls and bed sores are preventable with better nursing care. These scores helped pull down this facility's nursing grade significantly.