Bowdle Nursing Home

On top of faring well in its overall grade, this nursing home received an excellent inspection report. As a result, we gave it one of our highest grades in this category with a grade of A. Inspection grades weigh a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher scores in this area generally have very few severe deficiencies. This particular nursing home received 5 deficiencies on its inspection report. 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 grade is primarily tied to a nursing home's nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at 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 facility the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of turning a resident at least once a day.

Turning the page to our next category, this facility was awarded first-rate long-term care score. In fact, we awarded it a score of A in this category. When facilities receive a score in this range in this category it typically means it has plenty of staff and is a quality place to live on a permanent basis. Once we assessed the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 98.4 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is significantly higher than the average nursing home. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

In the final category, we gave this facility a grade of A for its short-term care rating. This rounded out a very favorable report card. Short-term care grades are commonly employed to gauge a facility's performance with rehabilitation. In order to provide good rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally need to provide higher levels of skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other highly skilled individuals. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home.