Fort Sanders Regional Medical Center

In addition to being a strong nursing home overall, it also earned A+ government inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually perfect. Inspection scores weigh a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better grades in this area tend to have very few severe deficiencies. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also received an A+ for its short-term care grade. Our short-term care scores are vital for residents looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally mandates more skilled nursing. This includes a broad range of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last item we considered in this area is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We discovered that 7 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

Moving on our next category, we awarded this facility a grade of A for its long-term care score. This is a dominant rating. For prospective residents in need of a permanent place to live as opposed to skilled nursing, long-term care is an important category. After looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination data. Unfortunately, it does not appear that this facility provided data regarding vaccinations. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Switching gears to the final area, this nursing home also performed well in our nursing category. We awarded it an A- in this area. This topped off a straight A profile. In computing a nursing home's nursing grade, we assess the amount of time nurses are with residents as well as the skill levels of the nurses. This nursing home provides 0.7 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well in the area of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.