Gilmer Nursing and Rehabilitation

Although we gave this facility a terrible overall grade, we awarded it a grade of B- for our inspections rating. In fact, the facility received very impressive inspection report this year. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing these inspection scores. One of those factors is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of the deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some are quite insignificant. This place was hit with 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be major deficiencies. This means that the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies to cause an immediate risk to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility was cited by CMS for possible abuse or neglect. We would not recommend this facility under any circumstance.

One of the other reasons we rated this nursing home so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing rating. In fact, nursing proved to be its second best category grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of C. Nursing scores are mostly associated with the facility's nurse staffing. This facility averages just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient per day, which is well below average. Lastly, despite not having the highest total nursing hours, this facility performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is often a good indicator that a place has sufficient quality controls in place.

Remarkably, we gave this nursing home a grade of C for its long-term care rating, which isn't a bad grade. For long-term care residents, the facility's primary goal is to maintain patients' quality of life and keep them safe. One of the statistics we considered in addition to nursing hours was vaccinations. Fortunately, this nursing home provided the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. This facility was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.03 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This facility's worst area is short-term care, which is the final category we scored. In this category, we awarded this facility a grade of D. In calculating our short-term care grades, we analyze the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The objective is to create a scale for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Based on its weak rating in this area, we were not shocked to discover this nursing home offers substantially fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than most nursing homes. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. This wasn't a strength for this nursing home. We found that just 0 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most nursing homes, around half of their residents are able to return home so this is well below average.