Arkansas Veterans Home at Fayetteville

While we graded this nursing home incredibly poorly overall, it earned a very impressive government inspection report this year. As a result, it earned one of our more favorable grades in that category with a B. Inspection scores account for a host of factors found on a facility's inspection report. One key criteria we look at is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. You generally want to avoid nursing homes with a bunch of deficiencies flagged. This facility was hit with 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This means that CMS didn't deem any of these deficiencies an imminent threat to resident health or safety. A couple minor deficiencies are not necessarily the end of the world.

We awarded this nursing home a grade of just D for our short-term care score and that actually turned out to be its next highest category. Our short-term care grades are critical for patients looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually utilizes additional skilled nursing services. This includes a broad range of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Not surprisingly, we found that this nursing home provides far less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. The final statistic we considered in this category is the number of patients that ultimately returned home from the nursing home. This nursing home struggled quite a bit in this area as well, with just 0 percent of its residents returning home. This was well below average.

The next area we looked at was long-term care. This nursing home's received a low-end long-term care grade where it was given an F. Facilities that receive this type of score in long-term care may not provide the kind of consistent around the clock care that some other nursing homes offer. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 79.25311 percent of its residents. This is pretty significantly below the national average. Surprisingly, this nursing home was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility has less hospitalizations than the average nursing home. This is its best score in this category.

The next area we looked at is nursing, where this facility was given a very poor grade in this category also. It received an abysmal F for this area, which is obviously a major disappointment. Nursing ratings are tied to levels of nurse staffing. This facility offered only 0.1 hours of nursing care per resident each day. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home fared well when it comes to minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these data points to be reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care.