Diversicare of Pell City

In addition to being a respectable nursing home overall, this place also excelled in the area of inspections, where it received an A-. Few facilities performed better in this category. These inspection ratings weigh several factors, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these factors by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This place received 6 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe deficiencies. This indicates that the inspectors did not consider any of these deficiencies to cause an immediate risk to resident health or safety. A couple of minor deficiencies shouldn't lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

This facility also received a favorable grade in our long-term care category. We awarded this facility an above average grade of B+ in this area. When nursing homes receive this type of score in this category it is usually a good sign for resident care and suggests that the nursing home is well-staffed with nurses and aids. After we finished assessing the volume of nursing care, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is very impressive. Pneumonia can be a deadly health condition for nursing home patients so we strongly prefer when a facility doesn't leave its residents vulnerable. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.05 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

One of this facility's better category grades was in the area of nursing care. In that area, we gave this facility a grade of C. Our nursing category consists of a handful of datapoints, many of which are based on levels of nurse staffing. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. This figure is significantly below the national average. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics. Although this nursing home got docked a bit for its nursing hours, it actually excelled in some of these quality metrics. With less than five percent of its patients experiencing pressure ulcers, it performed well in this subcategory. This can be an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as having a system of turning patients at least once a day.

This nursing home's worst area was short-term care, which is the final category we analyzed. In this area, we gave this nursing home a grade of just D. With our short-term care grade, we try to forge a fair gauge for rehabilitation services. In doing so, we analyze the nursing home's levels of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. With a grade this poor for this area, we were not surprised to learn that this facility was well below average in many staffing figures we assess. In fact, it supplied substantially fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other nursing homes. The last datapoint we considered in this area is the percentage of residents that ultimately returned home from the facility. This facility struggled quite a bit in this metric as well, with just 4.4 percent of its residents returning home.