Arrington Living Center

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility has received near flawless government inspections in recent years. We awarded them an A+ in this area. Inspection grades account for several factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One key criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better scores in this area generally have very few severe deficiencies. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Compounding its dominant accomplishments in other areas, we gave this facility a score of A for its long-term care score. Long-term care ratings of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. In addition to looking at the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients, which is very impressive. Pneumonia can be a deadly illness for nursing home residents so we prefer when a nursing home doesn't leave this to chance. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Another strong feature for this facility is that it received an impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of B. Nursing ratings are largely tied to a nursing home's nurse staffing. 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 nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as having a protocol of turning residents more often.

The last area we analyzed is short-term care. We awarded this nursing home a decent grade in that category, with a B-. Although this is not on par with many of this facility's other grades, it is still not the end of the world. Our short-term care grade is generally used to score a facility's performance with rehabilitation. To provide highly rated rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must feature higher levels of highly skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other licensed professionals. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last metric we assessed in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that just 3.6 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is below average.