Diversicare of Boaz

To go along with a favorable overall grade, we gave this facility an A+ for our inspection category. Inspection ratings are based on many datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places that score well in this area typically have few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these places generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. While this facility had a few deficiencies on its report, none were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also was given a very strong long-term care score. This actually turned out to be this facility's second strongest category score. In that area, we awarded this facility a score of A. When facilities receive a score in this range in this category it typically means it has plenty of staff and is a quality place to live on a permanent basis. After considering the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Vaccines are critical to keeping residents out of the hospital. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Moving on our next area, this facility received a top-shelf short-term care score. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A- in this category. Our short-term care grades are believed to be most important for residents in need of a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually mandates more skilled nursing. This means not merely nursing, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final item we considered in this category is the percentage of residents who returned home from the facility. We found that 5.8 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

The final area we rated is nursing, where this facility received a grade of A-. This wrapped up a very strong report card. Not many nursing homes received an A- or better in every single category. Our nursing score is primarily associated with a nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This facility provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as having a protocol of turning a patient more often.