Alice Byrd Tawes Nursing Home

One of the reasons this turned out to be a great nursing home is that it received a very impressive nursing score. In that area, we gave this facility a grade of A. In calculating our nursing scores, we assess both the number of hours nurses spend with residents and the skill levels of those nurses. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as employing a system of moving residents even once per day.

Among the reasons we rated this facility so favorably is that it was given a dominant short-term care score. In fact, short-term care ended up being its second highest category grade. In that area, we gave this facility a score of A-. Short-term care grades are commonly used to gauge a facility's rehabilitation services. In order to have quality rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to offer better levels of highly skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other highly skilled individuals. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 5.3 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

Turning to another of this nursing home's strengths, it also received a very impressive inspection grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A-. Inspection scores weigh several factors, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these factors by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This place was assessed 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This tells you that CMS didn't deem any of these deficiencies to be an imminent risk to patient safety or health. Remember that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in the industry.

Moving on to our fourth category, this nursing home received an acceptable long-term care grade. While this wasn't as strong as many of its other grades, this is really a middle of the pack score. In a long-term care setting, the nursing home's primary goal is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. Once we concluded our assessment of the amount of nursing care, we then looked at the facility's vaccination record. We were a bit bothered by the fact that this nursing home vaccinated just 76.233185 percent of its patients for pneumonia. On a more positive note, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.