Pioneer Health of Central Georgia

Although we gave this nursing home a poor overall score, we gave it a fairly respectable grade in the area of nursing, where it received a B-. This was better than its other category grades. Nursing grades are heavily correlated with levels of nurse staffing. This place provides only 0.5 hours of nursing care per patient per day. This is a somewhat discouraging figure as it is well below the national average. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this place actually excelled in some of the quality-based metrics we assessed. It scored well in terms of avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. We consider these areas to be good measures of the quality of nursing care. In many cases, the quality of nursing care is as important as the quantity of hours of care provided.

This nursing home's long-term care grade appears to be one of its best scores. The nursing home was awarded a C in this category. If you are looking for services other than rehabilitation, you should take a close look at long-term care ratings. One of the datapoints we considered after nursing hours was vaccinations. Candidly, we were a bit bothered by the fact that this facility provided the pneumonia vaccine to a relatively low 85.77236 percent of its patients. Fortunately, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

We also awarded this nursing home a solid score in the area of short-term care, where we gave it a C. Our short-term care ratings are considered to be more meaningful for individuals needing a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually utilizes more skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes not just nursing, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Unfortunately, this facility was below average in terms of its level of physical therapy and registered nurse hours provided to its residents based on the metrics we assessed. The critical question is whether this also affected quality of care. The final datapoint we considered in this category is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that just 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is below average.

Unfortunately, this facility did not receive a favorable inspection score. We gave it a grade of just just D in this category. Inspection ratings relate to a facility's government inspections. We weight poor inspection scores heavily in our assessment. Since the inspections are completed by independent government inspectors, we consider this data to be reliable. Our inspection ratings account for a host of factors found on a facility's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. This facility had 5 deficiencies on its inspection report. The only positive thing we can say is that none of these deficiencies were in the categories that indicate they caused a risk to patient health or safety. Finally, CMS cited this nursing home for possible abuse or neglect. Hopefully, its performance improves in the future, but until then we simply can't recommend this facility.