AHC Dyersburg

While we did not rate this nursing home well overall, we want to note its decent government inspection reports in recent years. We gave it a relatively respectable score of B- in that area. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining our inspection scores. One critical factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some of these end up being relatively minor. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G through L. This tells you that CMS didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Lastly, this facility was flagged by CMS for possible abuse or neglect. We prefer to avoid facilities with this designation. Please do your best to find an alternative nursing home.

One of the other reasons we rated this facility so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing rating. This proved to be its second best category grade. In that area, we gave this facility an B-. In computing a nursing home's nursing rating, we consider the number of hours nurses spend with residents as well as the skill levels of those nurses. This nursing home averages just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis, which is not an impressive total. Finally, nursing ratings also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours, this nursing home performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is often a good indicator that a place has sufficient quality controls in place. Some falls can be avoided if a facility supplies enough nurses to assist its patients.

The third highest category we gave this facility in any category came in the area of short-term care, where we gave it a grade of B-. Short-term care scores are based in part on the facility's quantity of highly-skilled highly skilled professionals. This includes a wide scope of nursing services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, not to mention other forms of therapy. In this nursing home's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than a typical facility. The hope is that this does not adversely impact the quality of care. The final measure we considered in this category is the percentage of residents that returned home from the nursing home. We found that just 5.3 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

Moving on to our final category, this nursing home was given an acceptable long-term care score of B-. Our long-term care grades are critical for residents looking for non-healthcare services such as personal care. In addition to considering the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 98.8806 percent of its patients. Lastly, this facility was also able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.