Life Care Center of Banner Elk

Life Care Center of Banner Elk is in Banner Elk, North Carolina. The city has 6,249 people. This is a quality facility, with an overall grade of B. This facility definitely has plenty going for it. This nursing home is better in some categories than others, but it did not have any poor grades in any of the four major categories. More information about these categories can be found below.

In addition to earning a great overall score, this nursing home fared even better in our inspections category which is associated with the facility's recent government inspection reports. We awarded it a grade of A+ for this category, which is one of our highest grades. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in computing our inspection grades. One critical factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of these deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some end up being relatively insignificant. While this facility had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G through L. This tells you that the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

This facility is also above average in the category of short-term care, where it was awarded a grade of B+. It outperformed most nursing homes in this category. Our short-term care grades are likely most meaningful for residents in need of rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation usually utilizes additional highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not just nursing services, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Remarkably, this place provides its residents at least 1.5 times as many physical therapist hours per week than the average nursing home. The last metric we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to return home. This facility was above average with 49.9 percent of its residents returning home.

Adding to its profile, this facility also earned a grade of B for its nursing rating. This is a well above average score in this category. Our nursing grade is based on a number of factors. The most heavily weighted factor is the number of hours nurses spent with patients. This facility provided 3.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at certain nursing quality measures in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We look at these metrics as predictive indicators of the quality of nursing care offered, since better care tends to reduce these problems.

The next area we rated was long-term care. For that category, we gave this facility a grade of C. Long-term care grades assess a nursing home's personal care rather than the highly skilled therapy and medical services that are critical to a skilled nursing facility. Once we concluded our assessment of the quantity of care provided by nurses, we turned to the facility's vaccination records. We were pleased to find that this nursing home vaccinates 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 1.67 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this nursing home had less hospitalizations than the majority of nursing homes.