Friendship Health and Rehab Center

Friendship Health and Rehab Center is on a list of 10 facilities in Roanoke, Virginia. Sporting an overall grade of B-, this is likely a decent facility. Based on the data we reviewed, there are certainly far worse facilities out there. This nursing home is better in some categories than others, but it did not have any poor grades in any of our major categories discussed below. More information about these categories can be found below.

We want to point out that this facility outperformed its overall grade in the area of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless government inspection report this year. As a result, we gave it one of our highest scores in that category with an A-. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in calculating these inspection ratings. One of those factors is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some deficiencies are quite insignificant. Although this nursing home had some deficiencies on its report, none of them were major deficiencies based on CMS' deficiency scale. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

This facility's second highest area was short-term care. In that category, we awarded this facility a grade of B-. Our short-term care ratings are considered to be most important for those needing rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation generally utilizes higher levels of highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not just nursing services, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Fortunately, this nursing home offers both physical therapists and registered nurses. Not all facilities offer both. Lastly, we looked at the number of patients that ultimately were able to return home from this facility and found that this facility performed better here. In fact, this nursing home performed better than most nursing homes with 54 percent of its patients returning home.

This nursing home's third most favorable area was long-term care. We awarded it a grade of B- in this category. This is basically a slightly below average score in this area. Long-term care ratings are pivotal for patients seeking personal care. One of the factors we considered in addition to nurse's aid hours is vaccinations. Fortunately, this nursing home provided the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. The last statistic we assessed was its hospitalization rate. We found that this facility had 1.86 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is not too far off the national average.

Our next area is nursing, in which we awarded this facility a grade of C in that category. Our nursing category weighs several factors, many of which are tied to quantities of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 3.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also weighed some quality-based metrics. This facility scored well in a few of the quality measures we assessed. For example, in terms of the percentage of its residents suffering from pressure ulcers, this place outpaced the national average. This is generally a good indicator that a nursing home has sufficient quality controls in place. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented with better nursing care.