Cartersville Heights

While this facility's overall grade was as bad as it gets, it actually really excelled in the area of inspections. In fact, we awarded it an A for that category, which is one of our highest scores. Our inspection scores are tied to several datapoints found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Deficiencies are an important thing to look for on these inspections. You should especially avoid facilities that have severe deficiencies associated with endangerment of patients. This nursing home was hit with 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered to be major deficiencies. This indicates that the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies to pose an immediate threat to patient health or safety. A couple minor deficiencies are not the end of the world.

We awarded this facility a grade of just D for our long-term care grade and that actually turned out to be its next most respectable category. Facilities that don't fare well in this category typically aren't as well-staffed and are lagging in a few of the areas of routine personal care we looked at. In addition to considering the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. Frankly, we were a bit alarmed this facility gave the vaccine to a relatively low 67.82609 percent of its residents. To our surprise, this nursing home was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With only 1.32 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this nursing home has fewer hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes. This was its best feature in this category.

This nursing home wound up receiving a a terrible grade in our short-term care category. It received an F in this area. In calculating our short-term care ratings, we analyze a facility's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other highly skilled individuals. This grade is often a meaningful measure of a facility's ability to rehabilitate patients. It appears that this place was subpar in multiple staffing areas we focus on. In fact, it offered fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most nursing homes. The last item we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return home. We discovered that just 47.4 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.

The final category we assessed is nursing, in which this facility received an abysmal grade in this category as well. It received an F in this category, which is obviously somewhat alarming. Our nursing grade weighs quite a few data points, most of which are associated with levels of nurse staffing. This place averaged just 2.2 hours of nursing care per patient daily. This statistic is well below average. In addition to receiving below average marks for total nursing hours, this facility was a bit less impressive in some of the quality-based metrics we looked at in calculating our nursing grades. We looked at the percent of patients experiencing pressure ulcers and found that this place was at roughly 150 percent of the national average in this statistic. This is a bad sign when you consider that many pressure ulcers are preventable with better nursing care. Unfortunately, this statistic pulled down this facility's nursing rating substantially.