Arkansas Veterans Home at Fayetteville

While this nursing home's overall grade was decent, it really excelled in the area of nursing. In fact, we gave it an A- for that category, which is one of our highest scores. The nursing grade consists of many components, many of which are based on quantities of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 0.5 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 place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Another one of this facility's more favorable category grades came in the area of short-term care. In that category, we gave this facility a B+. Our short-term care scores are critical for patients looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally mandates more highly-skilled nursing. This includes a broad scope of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final statistic we assessed in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.

This nursing home also received a very favorable inspection grade. In that area, we gave this facility a grade of B. Arguably the most important factor we consider in determining our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Nursing homes with better grades in this area typically avoided the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. While this nursing home had some deficiencies on its inspection report, none of them were severe based on CMS' scale. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

The final area we assessed is long-term care, which ended up being this facility's worst category. We awarded this nursing home a grade of D in this category. Unfortunately, this grade pulled down the facility's overall profile a bit. Nursing homes that don't score well in this category often don't provide as much nursing care and also may be struggling in a few of the areas of routine personal care we looked at. On top of looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. Candidly, we were a bit worried that this nursing home provided the vaccine to just 76.73469 percent of its patients. Surprisingly, this place was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility has fewer hospitalizations than many nursing homes. This was its best score in this category.