Decatur Rehab & Health Care Center

Although this facility's overall score was terrible, it actually didn't perform as poorly in the area of nursing. We awarded it a grade of C for this area. The nursing grade consists of quite a few datapoints, many of which are tied to nursing hours. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This is a low total compared to most other nursing homes. Finally, our nursing scores also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours, this facility performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is generally a good indicator that a nursing home has quality controls in place. Some falls could be avoided if a nursing home supplies enough nurses to assist its residents.

Sadly, this nursing home only earned a D for its long-term care score, which happens to be one of its higher category scores. Facilities that do not fare well in this category typically are not as well-staffed and are lagging in some of the areas of routine medical care we assessed. One of the criteria we considered on top of nurse's aid hours was vaccinations. Candidly, we were a bit worried that this facility provided the pneumonia vaccine to a relatively low 89.928055 percent of its residents. To our surprise, this place was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility had fewer hospitalizations than many nursing homes. This is its best score in this category.

This facility's second worse category is short-term care, where it received just a D in that area. This is a relatively poor grade. In crafting these short-term care scores, we analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. Our goal is to create a tool for comparing the rehabilitation services of different facilities. Not surprisingly, we found that this nursing home provides far less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. The last metric we considered in this area is the percentage of patients that ultimately returned home from the nursing home. This nursing home struggled quite a bit in this area as well, with just 0 percent of its patients returning home.

Turning our last category of inspections, this nursing home received a horrible grade. For nursing homes with poor inspection scores, you should focus on any severe deficiencies found on their recent inspection reports. This particular facility was hit with 9 deficiencies on its inspection report. The only positive thing we can say is that none of its deficiencies were in the categories that suggest they created a risk to patient health or safety. Finally, CMS flagged this nursing home for possible abuse or neglect. This is not what you want to see. We advise you to direct your search elsewhere.