Blue Ridge in the Fields

While we were not very complementary of this nursing home's overall score, it received a very impressive inspection report this year. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, it earned one of our highest grades in that category with an A. Perhaps the most critical factor we consider in calculating our inspection grades is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. It is typically in your best interest to avoid nursing homes that had a long list of deficiencies. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G through L. This tells you that the inspectors did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A couple minor deficiencies aren't the end of the world.

Moving on to the area of long-term care, this facility was awarded just a D in this area. Unfortunately, this wound up being its second best grade. Nursing homes that don't fare well in long-term care typically are not as well-staffed and are lagging in some of the areas of routine personal care we looked at. On top of looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. As it turns out, this nursing home administered the vaccine to only 11.891894 percent of its residents, which is several points lower than we expected. To our surprise, this facility was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility has less hospitalizations than many nursing homes. This is its best score in this category.

This nursing home ended up receiving a a terrible grade in our short-term care category. It received an F in this area. Short-term care ratings are based in part on a nursing home's quantity of skilled highly skilled professionals. This means a wide spectrum of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, in addition to other variations of therapy. Considering its weak grade in this area, we weren't surprised to learn this place provides substantially fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most nursing homes. The last metric we assessed in this category is the percentage of residents that were able to return home from the facility. This facility struggled quite a bit in this area as well, with just 0 percent of its patients returning home. Unfortunately, this was well below average.

The next category we rated is nursing. Sadly, it received a lowly F for this area, which is a bottom of the barrel grade. Our nursing grade considers a host of data points. The most important factor is the number of hours nurses spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed well in the area of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. Many consider these areas to be measures of the quality of nursing care.