Attala County Nursing Center

We want to point out that this facility outperformed its overall score in the area of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in this category with an A. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining our inspection ratings. One key factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some are relatively insignificant. We were not able to locate deficiency data for this nursing home. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Another one of this facility's more impressive category grades came in the category of long-term care. In that area, we awarded this nursing home a grade of B+. It actually performed better than most facilities in this category. Nursing homes that receive this kind of grade in long-term care typically provide consistent around the clock care to ensure patients are kept in good health. In addition to looking at the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia can be a life threatening health condition for nursing home residents so we like it when a facility doesn't leave its residents vulnerable. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The third most favorable category we awarded this nursing home in any category came in the area of short-term care, where we gave it a C. In computing these short-term care ratings, we assess the facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The purpose is to devise a tool for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Unfortunately, we were not able to track down information on registered nurse or physical therapy staffing for this nursing home. The last metric we looked at in this category is the percentage of residents who who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. We found that just 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

The final area we assessed is nursing, ended up being this nursing home's weakest category. We gave this nursing home a grade of D in that category. This really was one of just a few weak links of a strong report card. Our nursing score is based on quite a few subcategories, however, the most important one is the number of nurse hours per patient per week. This particular facility offered just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This statistic is well below the national average. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This place performed well in terms of minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. Many consider these statistics to be good measures of the quality of nursing care.