Erwin Health Care Center

To go along with its strong overall performance, we gave this nursing home an A for our inspections rating. Perhaps the most important factor we consider in calculating our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a facility's inspection reports. Nursing homes with better grades in this area typically avoided the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This place was assessed 6 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered severe. This indicates that the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies to create an imminent risk to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its profile, this facility also earned a score of B+ for its long-term care rating. This is a well above average grade in this category. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in this category it typically means it has plenty of staff and is a quality place to live on a permanent basis. On top of looking at the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is far higher than most nursing homes. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Another strong feature for this facility is that it received an impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of B. We assessed the licensure of nurses employed by the facility, as well as the number of hours those nurses were with residents, in calculating our score in this area. This nursing home averages 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can many times be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Our last category is short-term care, in which we awarded this nursing home a grade of C in that category. Our short-term care scores are arguably more meaningful for individuals needing rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation usually mandates additional highly-skilled nursing services. This includes not just nursing, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of residents who ultimately were able to return home from this facility. We found that 3.2 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was well below the national average.