Cullman Health & Rehab 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. Perhaps the most critical factor we look at in calculating our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Facilities with higher scores in this area typically avoided the most severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. While this nursing home had a few deficiencies on its report, none of them were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Among its many impressive grades, this facility received an excellent nursing grade. In fact, we gave it a grade of A- in that category. Our nursing score is largely associated with the facility's nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well when it comes to minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Additionally, this nursing home also received favorable long-term care grades this year. In fact, we gave it one of our higher grades in that category, with a score of B+. Nursing homes that excel in long-term care typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to patients. In addition to assessing the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia is too frequently a deadly illness for nursing home residents so we strongly prefer when a nursing home does not take any chances. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Turning to the fourth category, this nursing home was awarded a high-end short-term care score. We awarded it a B+ in that area, topping off one of our better report cards. In calculating our short-term care scores, we analyze the facility's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other types of therapists. This area is more often than not a fair measure of the nursing home's rehabilitation. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. However, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final metric we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return home. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.