Providence Healthcare

Providence Healthcare is an average-sized facility located in Thomaston, Georgia. With an overall score of C, this is likely a middle of the road facility. Based on our analysis, this facility ought to meet the needs of many people. This facility didn't excel in all of our categories, but it did not receive any terrible grades either. More information about these categories can be found below.

This nursing home received a solid overall grade as described above, but we really wanted to point out its excellent government inspections in recent years. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. Perhaps the most critical factor we look at in determining our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Facilities with higher grades in this category most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. While this place had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This means that CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A couple of minor deficiencies should not stop you from considering a nursing home.

This facility received its second highest category grade in the area of long-term care. We awarded this facility a grade of B- in this area, which is a decent grade. Long-term care grades focus on a nursing home's assistance with daily living rather than the skilled therapy or healthcare services that are critical to a skilled nursing facility. On top of looking at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients, which is more than the majority of nursing homes. Lastly, this nursing home was also able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

Unfortunately, this facility only received a D for its short-term care grade, which is not an impressive grade. In computing our short-term care grades, we assess the facility's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other licensed professionals. This rating is generally a reliable assessment of the nursing home's ability to rehabilitate patients. Based on its grade in this area, we were not surprised to discover that this facility is well below average in terms of its quantity of physical therapy and registered nurse hours offered to its residents based on the metrics we looked at. The final measure we assessed in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. It fared better in this area, with 50.4 percent of its residents returning home.

This nursing home's worst area is nursing, which is the last category we assessed. For this area, we awarded this facility a grade of just D. We scrutinized the licensure of nurses working for the facility, in addition to the number of hours the nurses spent with residents, in calculating our score in this area. With a meager 3.1 hours of nursing care per patient per day, this facility's nurse staffing levels were well below the national average. In addition to receiving below average marks for total nursing hours, this place was less impressive in some of the quality-based metrics we looked at in determining our nursing scores. We looked at the percentage of patients suffering pressure ulcers and found this nursing home was at approximately 150 percent of the national average in this metric. This is a bad sign when you consider that so many bed sores are believed to be preventable with better nursing care. Unfortunately, this statistic really pulled down this facility's nursing rating substantially.