Diversicare of Smyrna

While we did not rate this facility well overall, we want to note its decent government inspection reports in recent years. We gave it a relatively respectable grade of B- in that category. We believe that one of the most important factors in assessing an inspection report is deficiencies. We especially look at the severity of those deficiencies. This particular nursing home received 4 deficiencies on its inspection report. On top of having severe deficiencies, this facility was cited by CMS for possible abuse or neglect. We would not recommend this facility under any circumstance.

This nursing home actually received a decent grade in the area of nursing as well. We awarded it a grade of B- for that category, which is not a bad score. We weighed the qualifications of nurses at the nursing home, as well as the number of hours the nurses were with patients, in computing our rating in this area. This nursing home averages just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Finally, nursing grades also consider quality-based measures, such as avoiding major falls. Despite not having the most impressive total nursing hours, this nursing home performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has sufficient quality controls in place. Some falls can be avoided if a facility supplies enough nurses aids to assist its patients.

The third area we graded is long-term care. In that area, we gave this facility a decent grade of B-. In the area of long-term care, we look at the quantity of care provided by a nursing home, as opposed to more sophisticated services. On top of looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. We discovered that this nursing home gave the vaccine to only 55.136986 percent of its patients, which is not a very encouraging sign. Nevertheless, this nursing home was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Switching gears to our fourth area, this facility was awarded a grade of C in short-term care, which is generally an acceptable grade. In the category of short-term care, we try to qualify indicators of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. We assess a nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and physical therapists. Unfortunately, this facility was below average in terms of its number of registered nurse and physical therapy hours provided to its residents based on the metrics we assessed. The final statistic we considered in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that just 5.1 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is below average.