Greenbrier Health Care Center

The main reason this turned out to be a decent nursing home is that it earned an elite inspection grade. In fact, its inspection score was far superior to its overall grade. In our inspections category, we gave it an A. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing these inspection ratings. One critical factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies are relatively minor. While this place had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G through L. This means the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also received high marks in the category of long-term care, with an impressive grade of A- in this area. Nursing homes that do well in this category typically are well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to residents. Once we concluded our assessment of the quantity of nursing care, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia sadly can be a life threatening condition for nursing home residents so we strongly prefer when a nursing home does not take any chances. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Next, we looked at the nursing category where we awarded this nursing home a grade of B-, which is a decent grade. Our nursing rating is mostly associated with a facility's nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident daily, which is a very low figure. Finally, our nursing scores also factor in quality-based assessments, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours, this nursing home performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is usually an indicator that a place has sufficient quality controls in place. Some falls can be avoided if a facility provides enough nurses to assist its patients.

The final category we graded was short-term care, ended up being this nursing home's weakest category. We awarded this facility a D in that category. This is one of just a few weak links on an otherwise strong profile. Short-term care ratings are based in part on a facility's quantity of highly-skilled highly skilled professionals. This means a broad spectrum of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Unfortunately, we found that this nursing home provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other facilities. Lastly, we considered the number of residents that eventually returned home from this facility. This facility didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 3.2 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.