Life Care Center of Ooltewah

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. Inspection grades are based on pieces of information located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that excel in this category have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these places generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This tells you that CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspections are uncommon in the industry.

We also awarded this facility a score of A for our short-term care grade. Our short-term care ratings are likely most meaningful for residents in need of rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation generally requires additional skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes not just nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we considered the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 6.1 percent of this facility's patients returned home.

This facility is also strong in the area of nursing, where it received a grade of B. It outperformed most nursing homes in this category. Our nursing rating is based on the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We factor in both the levels of licensure of those nurses as well as the amount of time spent with patients. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also looked at some nursing quality measures in determining our nursing grades. This place performed very well in the area of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

The final area we scored ended up being this facility's poorest area. Nevertheless, even in its weakest link we still awarded it a respectable grade of C for our long-term care category. For prospective patients looking for a permanent residence rather than rehabilitation, long-term care is an important category. In addition to assessing the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 98.83721 percent of its residents. This place keeps its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.