Erwin Health Care Center

The main reason this facility received a decent overall score is its impeccable inspections in recent years. We awarded it one of our better grades in that area, with an A. This is a much better grade than the place's overall score, which was decent but certainly not elite. Perhaps the most important factor we look at in determining our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Places with better grades in this area most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. This facility received 6 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe deficiencies. This indicates that CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies an imminent threat to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also was given a strong long-term care grade. As a matter of fact, we awarded it a B+ in that area, which happens to be one of our better. Facilities that do well in this category tend to provide patients with closer supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. In addition to assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia sadly can be a dangerous illness for nursing home patients so we like it when a facility doesn't take any chances. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The next best category we awarded this facility in any area came in the category of short-term care, where we gave it a B-. With our short-term care rating, we seek to forge a fair measure for rehabilitation. In this process, we assess the facility's scope of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final metric we considered in this area is the percentage of residents who ultimately returned home from the nursing home. We found that just 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home. This figure was below the national average.

The last area we rated is nursing. We awarded it a grade of C in this area. This is a fair grade in this category. Our nursing rating focuses on the facility's nurse staffing levels. We weigh both the levels of training of those nurses as well as the amount of time spent with residents. This nursing home averages just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this place actually fared better in some of the quality-based metrics we looked at. It performed well in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers.