Clay County Care Center

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing these inspection ratings. One critical factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these end up being relatively minor. This nursing home was assessed 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered to be major deficiencies. This indicates that the inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies to pose an imminent risk to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility was awarded a strong long-term care grade as well. We awarded it one of our higher scores in that category with a grade of B+. Facilities that receive this type of score in long-term care tend to provide consistent around the clock care to ensure residents are kept in good health. In addition to assessing the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is very impressive. Pneumonia is often a life or death ailment for nursing home patients so we strongly prefer when a nursing home does not take any chances. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This nursing home's next highest category was short-term care. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of B-. Short-term care scores are based in part on the facility's quantity of skilled skilled healthcare professionals. This includes a wide scope of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, not to mention other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final statistic we considered in this category is the percentage of patients that ultimately returned home from the facility. We found that just 4.8 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home. This figure was below average.

The final area we assessed was nursing. We awarded this nursing home an acceptable score in this area, with a grade of B-. Although this was not as favorable as several of this facility's other scores, it is nevertheless nothing to be ashamed of. In determining a facility's nursing score, we weigh the number of hours nurses commit to residents as well as the levels of training of those nurses. This nursing home averages just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Finally, while this facility got dinged a bit for nursing hours per resident, it actually excelled in some of our quality-based measures. With less than five percent of its residents suffering from pressure ulcers, it performed very well in this subcategory.