East Alabama Medical Center Skilled Nursing Facili

In addition to being a first rate nursing home overall, this facility performed well in the area of inspections, where it earned an A+. Few places fared this well in this category. Inspection ratings weigh several factors found on a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we consider is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher grades in this area usually have very few of these severe deficiencies. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also gave this nursing home a score of A+ for its short-term care grade. Our short-term care grade is typically used to grade a facility's performance with rehabilitation. To provide highly rated rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must provide better levels of skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other highly skilled individuals. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, based on the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last item we assessed in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We found that 6.8 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

This facility also was strong in the category of long-term care, where it received a score of A. Very few nursing homes received a better grade in this area. If you are seeking services other than rehabilitation, you should take a close look at long-term care grades. On top of assessing the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. We weren't able to find information about this nursing home's vaccination rates. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The fourth area we rated is nursing, where this nursing home received a grade of A. This topped off a very impressive report card. Not many facilities earned an A- or higher in all four categories. Our nursing grade considers a number of data points. The most heavily weighted factor is the quantity of hours nurses spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.9 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This nursing home performed very well in terms of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.