PruittHealth - Pickens

On top of being a top notch facility overall, this place also excelled in inspections, where it received a grade of A-. Not many facilities performed better in this area. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing these inspection scores. One critical factor is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some are relatively minor. While this place had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that the inspectors didn't deem 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.

Among its many dominant scores, this facility received an excellent short-term care grade. In fact, it received a score of A- in that area. Our short-term care scores are based on the nursing home's quantity of skilled nursing services. This includes a wide spectrum of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the number of residents who eventually returned home from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

The third area we looked at was long-term care. This nursing home was awarded a very positive long-term care grade, with a grade of B+ in the area. Nursing homes that excel in long-term care tend to provide residents with better supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. After we finished looking at the volume of care provided by nurses, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia sadly can be a life threatening illness for nursing home patients so we prefer when a facility doesn't roll the dice on this issue. Finally, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

In the final category we looked at, this nursing home received a very favorable grade of B+ in our nursing category. With this score, the facility topped off a first-rate report card. Nursing scores are mostly based on the facility's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also factored a few quality measures into our nursing grades. This facility was relatively weak in two of the major areas we focus on, with below average scores for minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. These areas are generally reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care provided.