Merry Wood Lodge Care and Rehabilitation Center

Merry Wood Lodge Care and Rehabilitation Center is a large facility located in Elmore, Alabama. With an overall grade of D, this is a lower end facility. This is not the worse facility we found, however, we would still be very reluctant to recommend it. If you aren't deterred by this place's profile, feel free to continue reading to find out about its category grades. We discuss nursing in the next section.

While we were not very complementary of this facility's overall grade, it actually received an impressive grade of A- in the area of nursing. Nursing ratings are tied to quality and quantity of nursing care. This nursing home provides 3.2 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a place has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can many times be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

We also gave this nursing home a solid score in the category of long-term care, where it received a C. In a long-term care environment, the facility's primary objective is to maintain patients' quality of life and keep them safe. Once we finished looking at the quantity of nursing care, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 91.21813 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Nevertheless, this nursing home also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had just 1.56 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days.

The next best category we gave this facility in any area came in the category of short-term care, where we awarded it a grade of C. Our short-term care grades are critical for patients looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually requires more highly-skilled nursing services. This includes a broad scope of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. Unfortunately, we found that this place provided fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other nursing homes. The key is determining what effect this had on the quality of care. The last measure we looked at in this area is the number of residents that eventually returned home from the facility. We found that just 35.6 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

Moving on the last category of inspections, this ended up being this nursing home's weakest link. Inspection scores are based on a facility's recent inspections. We gave this nursing home just a D in this category, which is not a very good grade. Inspection grades factor in many items on the nursing home's recent inspection reports. If you find too many deficiencies on the reports, this is typically the worst sign. Severe deficiencies indicate a risk to the well being of residents. This facility was hit with 2 deficiencies on its inspection report. The only positive thing we can say is that none of its deficiencies were in the categories that suggest that they created a risk to resident health or safety. Finally, we want to draw your attention to the fact that this nursing home received significant government fines exceeding $50,000. This often indicates that government inspectors became fed up after several years of bad inspections.