Pruitthealth - Decatur

The main reason this ended up being a decent nursing home is that it earned an excellent inspection score. Its inspection score was far superior to its overall score. In the inspections category, we gave this facility an A. Our inspection scores weigh several factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with higher grades in this category usually have very few 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. Based on this, we still had favorable view of this nursing home's recent inspections.

In addition, we awarded this nursing home a grade of B in our nursing category. This is one of our better grades. Our nursing grade includes several components, many of which are associated with quantities of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures 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 nursing home Georgia in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as having a policy of turning a patient even once per day.

This facility was awarded its next best category score in the area of short-term care. We gave this facility a grade of C in this area, which is a reasonably acceptable grade. In calculating our short-term care scores, we analyze the facility's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other types of therapists. This grade is more often than not a useful assessment of a facility's rehabilitation services. In this nursing home's case, we were surprised to learn that it actually provides less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. The hope is always that this does not adversely affect the quality of care. Finally, we looked at the number of residents that eventually returned home from this facility. We found that 3.6 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was well below average.

Turning to our fourth area, this facility didn't fare well. With a rock bottom grade of F in long-term care, this is this facility's worst grade. Facilities that receive this kind of score in this category may not provide the type of consistent 24/7 care that some other facilities offer. On top of considering the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 92.91553 percent of its residents. This is a few points below what we anticipated but still a decent figure. To our surprise, this place was actually able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this nursing home had fewer hospitalizations than many nursing homes. This was its best score in this category.