East Alabama Medical Center Skilled Nursing Facili

In addition to faring well overall, this facility also received nearly flawless government inspections. As a result, it received one of our best scores in that area with an A+. Inspection ratings weigh several factors, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these factors by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means that the government 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 wanted to direct your attention to the fact that this facility performed well in our short-term care rating. We gave them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. In computing these short-term care ratings, we look at the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The goal is to formulate a scale for comparing the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the number of patients who were able to return home from this facility. We found that 6.8 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.

To complement its strong performance in other areas, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. The nursing grade weighs a handful of components, however, the main one is the level of nurse hours spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.8 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed very well in terms of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

In the last area, this facility also received a very strong long-term care rating, with a grade of A. This topped off a very impressive profile. For long-term care residents, the nursing home's primary objective is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. One of the statistics we considered on top of nursing hours is vaccinations. Unfortunately, it does not appear that this nursing home submitted data regarding vaccinations. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.