Caraday of Quitman

This facility earned a solid overall grade as described above, but we really wanted to point out its nearly flawless government inspection reports in recent years. We awarded them an A in this category. Inspection ratings are based on datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that score well in this category tend to have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these facilities should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. Although this facility had a few deficiencies on its inspection report, none of them were severe based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Turning to the category of long-term care, we awarded this facility a grade of A- in that area. When nursing homes receive this type of score in this category it is usually a good sign for resident care and suggests that the facility is well-staffed with nurses aids. In addition to looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is very impressive. Pneumonia tragically can be a deadly condition for nursing home patients so we strongly prefer when a facility doesn't leave its residents vulnerable. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This facility's next best category was its nursing grade, where it received a grade of C. Our nursing rating weighs many subcategories, however, the paramount one is the quantity of nurse hours per patient per week. This facility provided just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Finally, nursing grades also factor in quality-based measures, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours, this nursing home actually performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is usually a good indicator that a facility has sufficient quality controls in place. Many falls can be avoided if a nursing home provides enough nurses to assist its patients.

This facility's weakest category was short-term care, which is the last area we analyzed. For this category, we gave this facility a D. Short-term care grades are often used to gauge a facility's performance with rehabilitation. To have high-end rehabilitation services, facilities generally must feature higher levels of skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other types of therapists. We found that this facility was below average in terms of its quantity of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its residents based on the data we considered. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of patients who ultimately were able to return home from this nursing home. This facility didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 3.5 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.