Clay County Nursing Home

With an address in Ashland, Alabama, Clay County Nursing Home is the only option we identified in the area. After receiving an A overall grade, this nursing home has the prestigious distinction of being one of the top 100 nursing homes in Alabama. This is an impressive achievement in a state with a long list of elite facilities. We can not find many negative things to say about this facility. Its ratings are as good as they get. One of the best aspects of this nursing home's exemplary report card is its inspection score. Inspection reports are discussed in the next section.

We also wanted to emphasize that this nursing home has received near flawless government inspections in recent years. We gave them an A+ in this area. Arguably the most significant factor we look at in determining our inspection ratings is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places with better grades in this area most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. While this place had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that the inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also received an A+ nursing grade, making it one of the few nursing homes to receive multiple A+ category grades. Our nursing grade considers many datapoints. The most important variable is the quantity of hours nurses spent with patients. This nursing home provides 3.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at certain nursing quality measures in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We view these areas as predictive indicators of the caliber of nursing care being provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.

This facility also received a very impressive long-term care score. In fact, this ended up being its third most impressive category grade. In that category, we gave this facility a score of A. When facilities receive a grade in this range in this category it generally means it's well-staffed and is a quality place to reside on a permanent basis. After considering the amount of nursing care, we then analyzed the nursing home's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 99.26471 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia can be a life or death health condition for nursing home patients so we strongly prefer when a facility doesn't roll the dice on this issue. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The final area we scored was short-term care, where this nursing home received a B-. This was this facility's worst area. This is still not a bad grade. In our short-term care grade, we endeavor to forge a sound gauge for rehabilitation. In this process, we look at a nursing home's levels of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last metric we assessed in this area is the number of residents who ultimately were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that just 36.4 percent of this facility's residents returned home. This figure was below average.