Dawson Springs Health and Rehabilitation Center

Dawson Springs Health and Rehabilitation Center is one of just a couple available nursing homes located in Dawson Springs, Kentucky. We awarded it an overall grade of B-, which is a middle of the pack score. You can certainly do worse than this nursing home. The best part of this nursing home's report card was its exemplary inspection grade. Inspection grades are discussed in the next paragraph.

The primary reason this facility received a decent overall score is its impeccable inspections in recent years. We gave it one of our better scores in that category, with an A+. This is a notably better score than the place's overall score, which was decent but not in the elite range. Perhaps the most important factor we consider in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher grades in this category most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Even some of the best nursing homes receive an occasional ding on their inspection report.

In addition, we awarded this nursing home a grade of B+ in our long-term care category. This is one of our better scores. When facilities receive a grade in this range in this category it typically means it has plenty of staff and is an overall good place to live on a permanent basis. Once we assessed the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is much higher than the majority of nursing homes. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 1.7 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility has less hospitalizations than the average nursing home.

The next highest grade we gave this nursing home in any area came in the category of nursing, where we gave it a grade of C. Our nursing score weighs a host of subcategories. The most important one is the quantity of hours nurses spent with residents. This particular nursing home provided 3.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing ratings also include quality-based measures, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed better than average in this area.

This nursing home's least impressive category was short-term care, which is the final area we assessed. It received a lowly F for this area. Despite multiple decent grades in other areas, this grade is nevertheless concerning so we would like to to make a note of it. Our short-term care grade is typically employed to score a facility's rehabilitation services. In order to offer highly rated rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must have better levels of highly skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other licensed professionals. Unfortunately, we found that this nursing home provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. Finally, we assessed the number of residents who ultimately were able to return home from this nursing home. This facility didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 24.8 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.