Northside Health Care

Northside Health Care is an average-sized nursing home located in Gadsden, Alabama. Sporting an overall rating of A-, this facility is ranked among the more impressive facilities we assessed. We were so impressed with this facility that we ranked it in the top quarter of all nursing homes nationally. This facility also received phenomenal grades in each of our categories. More information about these categories can be found below.

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. Arguably the most important factor we consider in calculating our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies are found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with better scores in this area most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. This facility received 5 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This means that CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

On the list of its many dominant grades, this facility was awarded a strong long-term care grade. In fact, it received a grade of A in that category. When facilities receive this type of grade in long-term care it is a good sign for resident care and suggests that the facility is well-staffed with nurses and aids. Once we assessed the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is far higher than the vast majority of nursing homes. The last datapoint we looked at was the nursing home's hospitalization rate. Although it had 2.06 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, its risk adjusted statistic was close to the middle of the pack due to it having some more complicated patients.

Another one of this facility's impressive category grades came in the area of nursing care. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B+. In computing our nursing ratings, we analyze both nursing hours and the levels of licensure of those nurses. This nursing home provides 3.5 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 better than average in this area. This is often a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can many times be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

Moving on to our final category, this nursing home was awarded a highly favorable short-term care rating. Although this isn't quite as impressive as a few of its other scores, this remains one of the more impressive grades a facility can receive. In determining these short-term care scores, we look at the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The goal is to create a barometer for sizing up the rehabilitation services of different facilities. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. It performed decently in this area, with 47.3 percent of its residents returning home.