Providence Gallatin

In addition to its strong overall score, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for our long-term care rating. Nursing homes that do well in long-term care typically are well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to patients. After assessing the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is much higher than the average nursing home. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Turning to another one of this facility's strengths, it also received a very impressive inspection rating. Inspections turned out to be one of its best categories. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A+. Our inspection ratings weigh several factors included in a facility's inspection reports. One key criteria we weigh heavily is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with better grades in this area tend to have very few of these severe deficiencies. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home's next best category was nursing. We awarded it a grade of C in this category. While this wasn't quite as good as some of its other category grades, this isn't a bad score either. Our nursing score is mostly associated with the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This facility provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Lastly, nursing grades also factor in quality-based metrics, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours, this place actually performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is usually a good indicator that a facility has sufficient quality controls in place. Many falls can be avoided if a facility supplies enough nurses aids to assist its residents.

The next category we analyzed is short-term care, which proved to be this nursing home's least impressive category. It received a lowly F for this category, which is clearly somewhat concerning. In computing these short-term care scores, we look at the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, occupational therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. Our objective is to devise a barometer for comparing the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. Unfortunately, we found that this nursing home offered fewer registered nurse and physical therapist hours per patient than most other facilities. The final statistic we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 3.9 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these poor metrics doomed this nursing home's short-term care score.