Diversicare of Montgomery

We want to draw your attention to the fact that this facility really outperformed its overall score in the area of inspections. In fact, it received an excellent inspection report this year. As a result, we gave it one of our best scores in this category with a grade of A. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing our inspection scores. One of those factors is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is usually more important than the number of deficiencies, as some can be relatively insignificant. While this facility had a few minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G through L. This tells you the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A couple relatively minor deficiencies are not the end of the world.

This nursing home also was given a strong grade in our long-term care category. We gave this nursing home a better than average grade of B in that category. Long-term care grades in this range generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. One of the statistics we considered on top of nursing hours is vaccinations. This nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. This is a proven method to minimize unnecessary deaths and hospitalizations for the aged 65 and up population. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This facility's next most favorable category ended up being its short-term care grade, where it received a C. Our short-term care grades are believed to be more important for individuals requiring rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation typically mandates more skilled nursing. This means not merely nursing services, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. It does not look like this nursing home provided information about its staffing of registered nurses or physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of patients that ultimately were able to return home from this facility. We found that 4.6 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was well below the national average.

The final area we graded was nursing. We gave this nursing home a grade of D in our nursing category, leaving this as its weakest area. When determining a facility's nursing score, we assess the quantity of hours nurses are caring for residents as well as the levels of training of the nurses. This place averaged a meager 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident daily. This is not a very impressive figure. In addition to receiving below average marks for total nursing hours, this nursing home was less impressive in some of the quality-based metrics we looked at in calculating our nursing ratings. We looked at the percent of residents suffering pressure ulcers and found this nursing home was at roughly 1.5 times the national average in this metric. This is likely a bad sign when you consider that so many pressure ulcers are believed to be preventable with better nursing care. Unfortunately, this statistic dragged down this facility's nursing score significantly.