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 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This facility also received a dominant short-term care score. This actually is this facility's third strongest category grade. In that area, we gave this facility a grade of A-. Short-term care grades are generally employed to assess a nursing home's rehabilitation services In order to provide good rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to provide better levels of skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other types of therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final item we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients who who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

The next area we looked at is nursing, in which this nursing home received a grade of B. This actually turned out to be this facility's weakest category. A nursing home could be doing a lot worse when their worst grade still outperforms most other nursing homes. Our nursing rating is based on quite a few factors, most of which are tied to nursing hours. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility 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 prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.