Iredell Memorial Hospital

In addition to receiving a great overall score, this facility earned an A+ inspection grade. This score is based on its recent government inspections. An A+ in this area is one of the highest complements we can offer a facility. Inspection grades are tied to items located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that excel in this area tend to have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. This facility received 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe. This means that the government inspectors didn't deem any of these deficiencies to cause an imminent threat to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility was awarded strong marks in the category of short-term care as well. Indeed, it received one of our strongest grades in that category with a score of A-. Our short-term care scores are likely most meaningful for patients requiring rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation usually mandates more highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means not only nursing, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The final item we considered in this category is the number of patients that were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that 7.4 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

This facility also was given an impressive long-term care score. Indeed, we gave it an above average grade of B+ in this area. In a long-term care setting, the primary goal is to maintain residents' quality of life and keep them safe. On top of considering the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. Unfortunately, we were not able to locate information about this nursing home's vaccination rates. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

The last area we graded is nursing, which proved to be this nursing home's least impressive area. We gave this facility a D in that category. Nevertheless, you should not judge this facility based solely on a single bad area, since it was given a few impressive scores in other areas. In determining our nursing ratings, we look at both staffing levels and the skill levels of those nurses. This nursing home provides 0.2 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality measures in calculating our nursing grades. This nursing home performed well in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers.