Coosa Valley Health and Rehab

On top of receiving a strong overall grade, this facility excelled in our inspections category, which is based on the facility's recent inspection reports. In fact, we awarded it an A in this area. Perhaps the most important factor we look at in computing our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Places with better scores in this area typically dodged the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. This nursing home was assessed 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe. This indicates that CMS did not deem any of these deficiencies an immediate threat to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Among its many dominant scores, this facility was given a top-shelf long-term care grade. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A in that category. Nursing homes that excel in this category tend to provide residents with closer supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. Once we looked at the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 98.373985 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is much higher than most nursing homes. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Another strong feature for this facility is that it received an impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of B+. The nursing rating is based on a handful of components, most of which are based on quantities of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can many times be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The last area we assessed ended up being this facility's worst category. However, even in its worst category we still gave it a respectable grade of B- for our short-term care category. In determining these short-term care ratings, we assess the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our goal is to create a barometer for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various facilities. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the number of residents that eventually returned home from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was actually quite a bit below the national average.