Baron House of Hueytown

With an address in Bessemer, Alabama, Baron House of Hueytown is one of five available nursing homes there. Sporting an overall score of A-, this nursing home is ranked among the higher-rated nursing homes we assessed. In fact, we ranked this facility in the top 25 percent of all facilities in the United States. The best aspect of this nursing home's impressive report card is its inspection grade. Inspection grades are discussed in the next section

In addition to being a top notch nursing home overall, it also excelled in the area of inspections, where it received an A. Few nursing homes performed better in this category. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing these inspection grades. One critical factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some of these are quite minor. This facility was hit with 9 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This means that the government inspectors didn't consider any of these deficiencies to cause an imminent risk to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its strong resume, this facility also received an excellent nursing score, with a grade of A-. Nursing grades are primarily associated with a nursing home's nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 3.2 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at certain nursing quality measures in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We view these metrics as predictive indicators of the caliber of nursing care being provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.

This nursing home also was dominant in the area of long-term care, where we gave it a grade of A-. Very few facilities fared better in this category. Long-term care grades in this range generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. After we finished assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 99.13793 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is very impressive. Pneumonia is often a life threatening health condition for nursing home residents so we like it when a nursing home does not take any chances. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Switching gears to the next category, this facility was given a strong short-term care grade. In fact, we awarded it a grade of B+ in that category, wrapping up one of our finer report cards. In our short-term care score, we strive to create a meaningful barometer for rehabilitation. In this process, we assess a nursing home's level of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. This nursing home elevated its grade in this category by offering more care from registered nurses to its residents than the average facility. Finally, we assessed the number of patients that were able to return home from this facility. It performed better than most nursing homes in this area with 51.2 percent of its patients returning home.