Calhoun Nursing Home

On top of receiving a great overall score, this place also received top notch government inspections in recent years. We awarded them one of our higher scores in that area, with an A+. Inspection grades 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 government inspection report, none were serious based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility fared well in the area of long-term care. As a result, we gave it a score of A- for that area, which happens to be one of our better grades. Facilities that receive this kind of grade in this category typically provide consistent around the clock care to make sure residents are kept in good health. Once we finished looking at the quantity of nursing care, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia can be a life or death health condition for nursing home residents so we like it when a nursing home does not leave this to chance. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This facilities next best category is short-term care. We awarded it a grade of C in this category. This is basically a middle of the road score in this area. In determining our short-term care grades, we look at a nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. This grade is more often than not a useful assessment of the facility's rehabilitation services. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final measure we looked at in this category is the percentage of residents who returned home from the nursing home. We found that just 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

Switching gears to our final area, this facility received a grade of C for nursing, which is generally a decent rating. When calculating a facility's nursing grade, we look at the quantity of hours nurses are with residents as well as the level of licensure of the nurses. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Lastly, despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours, this nursing home performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is often a good indicator that a nursing home has quality controls in place.