Life Care Center of Banner Elk

One of the reasons this turned out to be a strong facility is that it earned an impressive inspection score. Inspections is its best category. In this area, we awarded it an A+. Inspection ratings weigh several factors, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these issues by reviewing copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This facility was assessed 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe. This tells you that the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies to be an immediate threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home was awarded a favorable long-term care grade as well. We gave it one of our higher scores in that area with a grade of B. Nursing homes that excel in long-term care typically are well-staffed and provide extensive hands on care to residents. In addition to looking at the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 96.860985 percent of its residents, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia tragically can be a life or death condition for nursing home residents so we prefer when a facility does not leave its residents vulnerable. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This facility received a favorable short-term care grade as well. We awarded it one of our better grades in that category with a grade of B. In the category of short-term care, we strive to assess indicators of a facility's rehabilitation. We analyze a nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and various therapists. Unfortunately, we were not able to find information about this nursing home's registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. The last statistic we assessed in this area is the number of residents who ultimately returned home from the facility. We found that 5.4 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

Switching gears to the next area, we awarded this facility a grade of D for our nursing category. This is the facility's weakest category rating. Of course, this grade pulled down the nursing home's overall grade to some degree. Our nursing rating weighs many components, however, the most important one is the number of nurse hours spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. While this nursing home's nursing hours are below average, it surprised us in some of the qualitative data points in this category. In particular, we were pleased to find that its patients appear to be sustaining fewer pressure ulcers than the national average.