Black Mountain Neuro-Medical Treatment Center

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. Inspection scores are based on many items found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that receive favorable grades in this area have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these places should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. While this place had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means the government inspectors did not consider 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.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received an impressive grade of A in our nursing category. Our nursing rating is primarily tied to the facility's level of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 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 North Carolina in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by having a system of moving a resident more frequently.

We also want to alert you to the fact that this facility was given a top-shelf grade of A in our long-term care category. Long-term care scores of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. On top of assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia is often a life threatening health condition for nursing home residents so we like it when a nursing home doesn't roll the dice on this issue. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The final area we graded was short-term care, where this nursing home received a B+. This wrapped up an elite profile. Very few facilities earned a B+ or better in every category. With our short-term care rating, we strive to craft a sound barometer for rehabilitation. In this process, we look at the nursing home's scope of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as speech therapy. It does not appear that this nursing home provided information on registered nurse or physical therapist staffing. Finally, we looked at the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.