Gallatin Rest Home

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility received an impressive grade of A in our short-term care category. In crafting our short-term care ratings, we analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The goal is to devise a scale for comparing the rehabilitation services of different facilities. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final item we looked at in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that 6 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

Adding to its impressive category grades, this facility excelled in the category of inspections, where it earned an A. Not many nursing homes performed as well in this area. Inspection ratings account for a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One key criteria we consider is the number and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher scores in this area generally have few of these severe deficiencies. Although this nursing home had some deficiencies on its report, none of them were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also excelled in the area of long-term care, where we awarded it a grade of A-. Not many facilities performed better in this category. In a long-term care environment, the primary goal is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. After looking at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 92.9078 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which happens to be a bit less than we expected but still a reasonably acceptable percentage. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Switching gears to our fourth category, this facility also excelled in the nursing category. We awarded it an A- for this area. This wrapped up truly elite report card. In calculating our nursing scores, we weigh both staffing levels and the levels of licensure of the nurses. This facility provided 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also assessed certain nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We look at these data points as reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.