Carriage Hill Health and Rehab Center

Carriage Hill Health and Rehab Center is one of four facilities located in Fredericksburg, Virginia. Featuring an overall score of B+. After grading the other alternatives in Fredericksburg, this looks like a higher quality option than the majority of them. Based on our assessment, this nursing home has quite a bit going for it. The best aspect of this facility's impressive profile is its inspection grade. We discuss inspections in the next section

One of the reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received a very impressive inspection rating. In fact, inspections turned out to be its best category grade. In this area, we gave this facility an A. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining these inspection ratings. One critical factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is usually more important than the number of deficiencies, as some are relatively insignificant. This place received 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered severe. This indicates that the inspectors did not consider any of these deficiencies an imminent risk to patient safety or health. We should point out that deficiency-free inspections are rare in the industry.

An additional quality feature for this facility is that it was awarded an impressive long-term care grade. Indeed, this ended up being its second best category score. In this category, we awarded this nursing home a B+. Long-term care ratings in this range generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. After looking at the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination data. This facility vaccinated 98.23678 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is much higher than the average nursing home. Finally, we looked at the nursing home's number of hospitalizations. With 1.79 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this nursing home is close to average in this area.

Turning to the third category, this facility also received a score of B+ for its short-term care rating. This is an above average grade in this area. In determining our short-term care ratings, we assess the facility's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other highly skilled individuals. This grade is generally a fair measure of a facility's rehabilitation services. Fortunately, this nursing home offers both physical therapists and registered nurses. Not all facilities offer both. Lastly, we looked at the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home, which as an area this facility performed much more favorably. It outperformed the vast majority of facilities in the country with 59 percent of its residents returning home. This is a significantly higher rate than most nursing homes.

The final category we rated is this nursing home's worst category. However, even in its worst category we still gave it a decent grade of B- for nursing. Our nursing score weighs a handful of subcategories, most of which are tied to levels of nurse staffing. Based on the CMS data, this nursing home offers 3.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based measures, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed better than average in this area. This is usually a good indicator of how carefully a facility's nursing staff is tending to its patients. Major falls can typically be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are used.