Jesse Helms Nursing Center

In addition to being a great overall grade, this facility also received A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. Arguably the most significant factor we consider in computing our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a facility's inspection reports. Places with higher grades in this category typically avoided the most severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. It doesn't look like we were able to find deficiency data for this nursing home. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also wanted to alert you to the fact that this facility was awarded a strong grade of A in our short-term care category. In determining these short-term care scores, we look at the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our objective is to create a barometer for comparing the rehabilitation services of different nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 6.5 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

We also would like to note the fact that this facility was given an elite score of A- in our long-term care area. For residents looking for a permanent place to live as opposed to skilled nursing, long-term care grades are an important measure. In addition to looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 83.233536 percent of its patients. This is a bit lower than we anticipated but still a respectable figure. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

In our final area, we gave this nursing home a A+ for our nursing rating. This wrapped up a first-rate report card. Our nursing grade focuses on the facility's level of nurse staffing. We weigh both the levels of licensure of the nurses as well as the amount of time spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can many times be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.