Calhoun Nursing Home

One of the reasons this place ended up being a quality nursing home is that it earned an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical area. Inspection scores weigh several factors, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these items by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. While this facility had some deficiencies on its report, none of them were major deficiencies based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

One of the other reasons we rated this facility so highly is that it was given a favorable long-term care score. Indeed, long-term care is its second most impressive category score. In that area, we awarded this facility a score of A-. When facilities receive this type of grade in long-term care it is usually a good sign for resident care and suggests that the facility is well-staffed with nurses and aids. Once we assessed the amount of care provided by nurses, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia is too frequently a life threatening condition for nursing home residents so we prefer when a facility doesn't leave this to chance. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This facility received its third most favorable category grade in the area of short-term care. We awarded this nursing home a B- in this area, which is an acceptable grade. In the category of short-term care, we try to qualify indicators of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. We analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and physical and occupational therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we assessed 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. At most nursing homes, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.

The final area we rated was nursing. We awarded this facility a solid grade in this area, with a grade of B-. Although this was not on par with some of this facility's other scores, it is still not a terrible score. Our nursing rating focuses on the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We weigh both the levels of training of the nurses as well as the amount of time spent with patients. This nursing home provided just 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis. This figure is far below the national average. Finally, despite not having the highest total nursing hours per resident, this facility performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is usually an indicator that a facility has quality controls in place.