Baptist Health Medical Center-Little Rock

In addition to being a great overall grade, this facility also received A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining our inspection ratings. One key factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some of these can be relatively insignificant. Amazingly, this was one of the few nursing homes in the country that had no deficiencies whatsoever on its inspection report. This is very impressive. A deficiency-free inspection report is what we like to see.

This facility was awarded strong marks in the category of short-term care as well. In fact, we awarded it one of our strongest scores in that category with a area of A. In forming our short-term care grades, we quantify the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The objective is to formulate a barometer for comparing the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. It does not look like this nursing home provided data regarding its registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. The final measure we looked at in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that 6.8 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

This nursing home also received a strong nursing score. In fact, we awarded it an above average grade of B+ in this area. Nursing grades are based largely on nurse staffing levels. This nursing home provides 0 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as having a policy of turning a patient at least once a day.

This nursing home's weakest area is long-term care, which is the last category we analyzed. In this category, we awarded this facility a grade of just D. We want to to point out this possible weak spot, however, you shouldn't over-emphasize a single bad area either. Nursing homes that do not fare well in long-term care often do not provide as much nursing care and also may be struggling in some of the areas of routine healthcare services we looked at. On top of assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. We were not able to find information about this nursing home's vaccination rates. Surprisingly, this facility was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this nursing home has less hospitalizations than most nursing homes. This was its best score in this category.