Huntsville Health Care Center

In addition to being a respectable nursing home overall, this place really excelled in the category of inspections, where it received an A. Few facilities performed better in this area. Inspection scores account for a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we consider is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher scores in this category usually have few of these severe deficiencies. This place was hit with 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe. This means that the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies to be an imminent threat to resident health or safety. A few minor deficiencies shouldn't lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

This facility's next highest category was its long-term care score, where it was awarded a B-. In determining our long-term care ratings, we look at the assistance with daily living received by a facility's residents. After assessing the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination records. We were somewhat surprised to discover that this facility vaccinated a relatively low 80.74534 percent of its residents against pneumonia. On a more positive note, 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 number.

Next, we looked at the nursing category where we awarded this nursing home a grade of C, which is a decent grade. Our nursing grade looks at the facility's nurse staffing levels. We factor in both the levels of training of the nurses and the quantity of hours spent with residents. 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, we also looked at several nursing quality measures. Although this place got docked a bit for its nursing hours, it actually excelled in some of these quality measures. With fewer than five percent of its patients suffering from pressure ulcers, it fared well in this metric. This can be an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of turning a resident even once per day.

Turning to our next area, this nursing home didn't perform well. With a bottom of the barrel grade of F in short-term care, this is this nursing home's worst category grade. Our short-term care grades are based on a nursing home's quantity of highly-skilled highly skilled professionals. This means a broad spectrum of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, not to mention other forms of therapy. Not surprisingly, we discovered that this nursing home offers substantially less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than the average nursing home. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of residents who ultimately returned home from this nursing home. This facility didn't fare well here either. In fact, we found that just 4 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was well off the national average.