NHC HealthCare Kingsport

In addition to being a first rate facility overall, this facility performed well in the area of inspections, where it received an A+. Very few nursing homes performed this well in this area. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing our inspection grades. One of those factors is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more important than the number of deficiencies, as some of these are quite insignificant. It does not appear that we have information about this nursing home's deficiencies. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also awarded this facility a grade of A+ for its short-term care grade. Our short-term care grades are based on the nursing home's quantity of skilled highly skilled professionals. This includes a broad spectrum of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, not to mention other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final statistic we considered in this area is the number of patients that returned home from the facility. We found that 7 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

This nursing home also fared very well in the category of long-term care, where we awarded it a grade of A. Not many nursing homes fared better in this category. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in this category it typically means it has plenty of staff and is a quality place to live on a permanent basis. Once we looked at the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is far higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

In our final area, we gave this facility a A+ for its nursing grade. This topped off a very favorable profile. Nursing ratings are tied to quantity of nursing care available. This particular nursing home provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as by having a policy of turning a resident even once per day.