Augusta Medical Center Skilled Ca

On top of receiving an elite overall grade, this nursing home received an A+ inspection rating. This is based on the facility's recent inspection reports. An A+ in this category is one of the highest complements we can pay to a nursing home. Perhaps the most significant factor we look at in calculating our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Facilities with better scores in this category most likely dodged the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G through L. This tells you that the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also fared very well in the area of short-term care, where we awarded it a grade of A. Few nursing homes received a better grade in this category. In the category of short-term care, we endeavor to qualify indicators of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. We analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including the ones performed by registered nurses and physical therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 7.5 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

Turning to an additional strength for this nursing home, we gave them one of our stronger scores in our long-term care category as well, with a B+. Long-term care grades in this range generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. On top of looking at the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. We weren't able to locate this facility's vaccination rates. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

The final area we looked at was nursing. In this category, we awarded this nursing home a decent grade of C. This actually is this facility's worst area. There are a number of factors within this grade. Many of these subcategories reflect nurse staffing. This facility provided just 0.2 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Finally, we like to look at quality-based statistics, such as the percent of residents who experienced pressure ulcers and major falls. Sometimes these metrics are decent indicators of the quality of nursing care.