Pruitthealth - Blue Ridge

In addition to earning a strong overall score, this nursing home performed well in our short-term care category. In fact, we awarded it an impressive grade of A- for that category, which is one of our highest grades. In our short-term care rating, we endeavor to create a valuable gauge for rehabilitation services. In this process, we analyze the facility's level of highly-skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the number of patients who returned home from this facility. We found that 5.3 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

Building on its impressive resume, this facility also excelled in the area of nursing. In fact, we awarded it an B+ for that category. Nursing ratings are mostly based on a nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as by having a policy of moving residents more frequently.

Turning to another of this nursing home's strengths, it also received a very impressive inspection rating. Inspections proved to be one of its best grades. In that area, we gave this nursing home an impressive grade of B+. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing these inspection scores. One critical factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is usually more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies can be quite insignificant. This particular nursing home received 2 deficiencies on its inspection report. Overall, this is still a good inspection report, but we'd always recommend looking into any deficiencies you find troubling.

The next category we graded was long-term care, in which we gave it a favorable grade of B. This nursing home truly does not have any weak spots. Long-term care ratings of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. Once we assessed the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 89.83957 percent of its residents against pneumonia, which happens to be slightly below what we were hoping for but still a reasonably acceptable percentage. Although its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we had hoped, at least this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.