PruittHealth - Fitzgerald

The main reason this turned out to be a decent nursing home is that it earned an elite inspection grade. Its inspection score was far superior to its overall score. In our inspections category, we gave this facility a grade of A+. Arguably the most important factor we look at in computing our inspection grades is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities with better scores in this area typically avoided the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. Although this facility had a few deficiencies on its report, none were major deficiencies based on CMS' deficiency scale. The fact that none of the deficiencies were severe leaves us less concerned with this inspection report.

This nursing home's short-term care rating is one of its more favorable grades. The facility was given a grade of B- in this category. Our short-term care scores are believed to be more meaningful for people in need of rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation generally utilizes more highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not only nursing services, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other forms of therapy. Unfortunately, it does not look like this nursing home provided data regarding its registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. Lastly, we assessed the percentage of residents that who were able to eventually return home from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home. This figure was well below average.

This facility's next best category grade came in the area of nursing. In that category, we gave this nursing home a grade of C. Our nursing rating assesses a handful of components, but the paramount consideration is the quantity of nurse hours spent with patients. This place provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Finally, our nursing scores also factor in quality-based metrics, such as avoiding major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours, this nursing home actually performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is typically an indicator that a facility has sufficient quality controls in place. Some falls can be avoided if a nursing home provides enough nurses to assist its patients.

The next category we scored was long-term care. We gave this nursing home a C in this category. Our long-term care grade is used to measure a facility's performance as a traditional nursing home, as opposed to focusing on the skilled nursing services offered by a rehabilitation facility. After assessing the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination record. We were pleased to learn that this nursing home vaccinated 98.46154 percent of its residents for pneumonia. Lastly, this nursing home was also able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.