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.

We also awarded this facility a score of A for our long-term care score. When nursing homes receive a grade 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 quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is far higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This nursing home also received a strong nursing score. In fact, we awarded it an above average grade of B+ in this area. The nursing score weighs a host of subcategories. The most important one is the quantity of hours nurses spend with patients. This facility provided 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 nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can typically be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The next category we analyzed was this nursing home's weakest category. However, even in its worst category we still awarded it a decent grade of B- for short-term care. Short-term care grades are commonly employed to score a nursing home's rehabilitation services. To have high-end rehabilitation services, facilities generally must have better levels of skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. 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 were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 2.4 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most facilities, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.