Life Care Center of Ooltewah

In addition to receiving a strong overall score, this facility received an A+ inspection grade. This score is based on the facility's recent inspection reports. An A+ in this category is one of the highest complements we can pay to a nursing home. Our inspection scores account for several factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we look at is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better scores in this category tend to have few of these severe deficiencies. Although this nursing home had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were major deficiencies based on CMS' scale. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in this industry.

This facility fared well in our short-term care category. Indeed, we awarded it a grade of A for that area, which turns out to be one of our most dominant scores. Short-term care grades are generally used to gauge a facility's rehabilitation services. To provide highly scored rehabilitation services, facilities generally need to feature better levels of skilled nursing services. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. Remarkably, this nursing home provides about 50% more services from physical therapists and registered nurses than most nursing homes we looked at. This is a very favorable sign. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that it outperformed the vast majority of facilities in the nation with 58.6 percent of its patients returning home. This is a significantly higher rate than most facilities.

This facility received a very good nursing grade this year as well. It received one of our better scores in that category with a grade of B+. Our nursing grade focuses on the facility's level of nurse staffing. We look at both the levels of training of the nurses and the amount of time spent with residents. This particular facility provided 3.9 hours of nursing care per resident each day. Roughly one quarter of this care was provided by registered nurses, which are among the most highly skilled nurses. Both of these figures easily exceed the national average. Lastly, this nursing home also performed well in several of the quality measures we looked at. By way of illustration, in terms of the number of its patients suffering falls which lead to major injury, this facility performed as well as any facility in the nation. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The next category we assessed is long-term care. In that area, we gave this nursing home a solid grade of C. This ended up being this nursing home's least impressive area. In the category of long-term care, we analyze the amount of services provided by a facility, rather than more medically-intensive services. On top of patient-friendly nursing hour statistics, this facility's vaccination statistics are favorable also. Indeed, this nursing home vaccinated 98.73418 percent of its patients for pneumonia. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. With just 1.46 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility had less hospitalizations than many nursing homes.