Big Sandy Medical Center Ltc

With an overall grade this high, it should come as no surprise that this nursing home performed well in the area of inspections, where it received a grade of A. Perhaps the most significant factor we consider in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Facilities with better grades in this category typically avoided the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. While this place had a few deficiencies on its report, none were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

To complement its strong performance in other areas, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A for our inspections rating. Nursing grades are largely based on the facility's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed very well in the area of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Turning the page to our next category, this nursing home received first-rate long-term care score. In fact, it received a score of A in this area. Nursing homes that do well in this category tend to provide patients with closer supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. After considering the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which is much higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Turning to our fourth area, this nursing home received a highly favorable short-term care grade. We gave it a grade of B+ in that area, rounding out one of our finer profiles. Short-term care grades are based in part on a nursing home's quantity of highly-skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This means a vast spectrum of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the number of patients that returned home from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.