Bledsoe County Nursing Home

In addition to performing well in its overall score, this facility earned even higher marks in the area of nursing. We gave it one of our best scores in that category with an A. Our nursing grade consists of quite a few factors, however, the main one is the quantity of nurse hours per patient per week. This nursing home averages 0 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this facility 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 state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by having a system of turning patients even once per day.

This facility also was given an impressive short-term care score. In fact, we gave it an above average score of B+ in this category. Short-term care grades are generally employed to assess a facility's rehabilitation services. In order to provide highly graded rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must offer higher levels of highly skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other types of therapists. We weren't able to find information about this nursing home's registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. Finally, we looked at the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

Another area of strength for this facility is in the area of inspections. In fact, inspections turned out to be one of its best categories. In that category, we gave this facility a B. Inspection scores weigh a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher scores in this category tend to have very few severe deficiencies. While this facility had some deficiencies on its inspection report, none of them were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

The next category we rated was long-term care. We awarded this facility a decent score in this category, with a B-. Although this was not as favorable as several of its other scores, it is nevertheless not a poor grade. Long-term care grades are important for individuals needing personal care. After assessing the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination statistics. We were pleased to find that this nursing home vaccinated 99.375 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Finally, this facility was also able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.