Dadeville Healthcare Center

In addition to receiving a strong overall grade, this facility received an A+ inspection rating. This is based on the facility's recent inspection reports. An A+ in this area is one of the highest complements we can pay to a nursing home. Arguably the most important factor we consider in determining our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Facilities with higher scores in this category typically dodged the most severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G through L. This tells you that the government inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also want to emphasize the fact that this facility received a top-shelf grade of A in our long-term care area. In a long-term care setting, the nursing home's primary goal is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. In addition to looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 90.33233 percent of its patients, which is a bit lower than we expected. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received an impressive grade of A in our nursing category. Our nursing grade is based on a handful of components, most of which are associated with nursing hours. This nursing home averages 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 nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can frequently be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The next category we analyzed is short-term care. This nursing home was awarded a favorable short-term care grade in our assessment, with a C. While this isn't as elite as several of its other category grades, this is nevertheless a decent score in that area. Short-term care grades are typically used to assess a nursing home's rehabilitation services. To offer good rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must have better levels of highly skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other licensed professionals. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last statistic we assessed in this category is the number of residents who returned home from the nursing home. We found that just 4.5 percent of this facility's patients returned home.