Accura Healthcare of Cherokee

One of the reasons this place ended up being a great nursing home is that it received an A+ in our inspections category. This is just about as good as it gets in this very important area. Our inspection scores are based on several pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that excel in this area typically have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these facilities should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. While this place had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were major deficiencies based on CMS' scale. A few minor dings aren't the end of the world.

Adding to this nursing home's list of strengths, it also received an excellent nursing grade. We awarded them an impressive grade of A in this category. Nursing scores are largely associated with a nursing home's nurse staffing. This facility provided 0 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed very well in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The third most favorable category we awarded this facility in any area came in the category of long-term care, where we awarded it a grade of B-. Our long-term care scores are meaningful for prospective residents needing non-healthcare services such as personal care. Once we finished looking at the volume of care provided by nurses, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination statistics. We were optimistic to learn that this facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia. Finally, 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 figure.

This facility's worst area was short-term care, which is the last area we assessed. In this category, we gave this nursing home a grade of D. We wanted to draw your attention to this possible weakness, however, you should not dwell on a single weak area either. In the area of short-term care, we attempt to assess measures of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. We look at a facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses and various therapists. Unfortunately, this nursing home was below average in terms of its quantity of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its residents based on the measures we assessed. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of patients who who were able to eventually return home from this facility. This facility didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 3 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was well off the national average.