Fairview at Redstone Village

With an address in Huntsville, Alabama, Fairview at Redstone Village is one of eight available nursing homes in the city. This nursing home received an overall grade of B+, which is very favorable grade. We were pleased to find out that this matched the average grade of nursing homes in Huntsville, which is one of the better cities in Alabama to find a nursing home. This nursing home's strong report card was highlighted by its inspection grade, which is addressed in the next paragraph.

In addition to being a great overall grade, this facility also received A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining our inspection ratings. One critical factor is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some of these are relatively minor. While this nursing home had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were major deficiencies based on CMS' scale. A few relatively minor deficiencies aren't necessarily the end of the world.

Among this facility's other accomplishments is its first-rate short-term care grade. We awarded them one of our most favorable scores in that category, with a score of A-. In the area of short-term care, we strive to evaluate indicators of a facility's rehabilitation services. We look at a facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. One reason for this facility's strong score in this category is that it provides a greater volume of physical therapist hours to its residents than the average nursing home. Lastly, we looked at the number of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that it outperformed the vast majority of facilities in the nation in this area with 60.3 percent of its patients returning home.

In addition, this facility also received favorable nursing grades this year. In fact, we awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B. Our nursing score includes many subcategories. The most important factor is the number of hours nurses spend with residents. With 4.8 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis, this nursing home surpassed the overwhelming majority of facilities. Lastly, we also looked at nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We view these metrics as reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care offered, since better care tends to reduce these problems.

The next category we analyzed was long-term care. In this area, we gave this facility a decent grade of C. This actually was this nursing home's least impressive area. For long-term care residents, the primary objective is to maintain residents' quality of life and keep them safe. After assessing the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 91.44737 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is a bit less than we expected but still a reasonably acceptable percentage. Fortunately, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 1.2 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility had less hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes.