Gallatin Health Care Center

Although we did not have many positive things to say about this nursing home's overall grade, it did receive a respectable government inspection report this year. It received a decent grade in that category with a B-. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining these inspection scores. One critical factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these are relatively insignificant. This particular nursing home received 5 deficiencies on its inspection report. We are also concerned by the fact that this facility was flagged by CMS for possible abuse or neglect. We prefer to avoid facilities with this designation. Please do your best to find an alternative nursing home.

One of this nursing home's better category grades came in the category of short-term care. This wound up being its second most favorable category. In that category, we awarded this facility a grade of B-. Short-term care grades are critical for residents in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically utilizes more highly-skilled nursing services. This means a vast spectrum of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. We found that this nursing home was below average in the two key staffing areas we focus on. The facility supplied fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than most other facilities. It is important to determine whether this also correlates to a lower quality of care. The final statistic we looked at in this area is the number of residents who returned home from the facility. We found that just 5.6 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

This nursing home actually received a decent grade in the area of nursing as well. We awarded it a grade of C for that category, which is not a bad score. When computing a nursing home's nursing score, we weigh the quantity of hours nurses are caring for patients and the levels of training of the nurses. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Finally, nursing ratings also consider quality-based assessments, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours, this nursing home actually performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is usually a reliable indicator that a place has quality controls in place. Many falls can be avoided if a nursing home supplies enough nurses to assist its residents.

Turning to the fourth area, we awarded this nursing home a grade of D in our long-term care category. This is the nursing home's least impressive category grade. For patients in need of a permanent place to live rather than skilled nursing, long-term care grades are a key measure. In addition to looking at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. Fortunately, this nursing home gave the vaccine to 96.2406 percent of its patients, which is a very respectable figure. Surprisingly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this nursing home has less hospitalizations than many nursing homes. Unfortunately, some of its other scores in the category were not as favorable as these.