Rockdale Healthcare Center

The main reason this nursing home received a decent overall grade is its impeccable health inspections in recent years. We awarded them one of our higher scores in that area, with an A-. This is a much better grade than the place's overall score, which was decent but not in the elite range. Arguably the most critical factor we look at in determining our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a facility's inspection reports. Facilities with better grades in this area typically dodged the more severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. 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 a generally positive view of this facility's inspections.

In addition, we also would like to note that this nursing home was given positive short-term care marks in this assessment. We gave them one of our more impressive grades in that category, with a B. This proved to be the nursing home's second highest grade. In the category of short-term care, we attempt to assess measures of a facility's rehabilitation services. We analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as the ones performed by registered nurses and various therapists. Unfortunately, we were not able to find information about this nursing home's registered nurse or physical therapy staffing. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 6.1 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

The third area we assessed is long-term care, where this facility received a grade of B- in this category. In a long-term care setting, the primary goal is to maintain patients' quality of life and keep them safe. In addition to assessing the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility gave the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients, which is higher than most nursing homes. Lastly, this place was also able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The final area we analyzed was nursing, which was this nursing home's least impressive area. Sadly, it received an F for this category, which is certainly very disappointing. In calculating a facility's nursing grade, we consider the amount of time nurses are with residents as well as the level of licensure of the nurses. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Unfortunately, this nursing home also had terrible marks in some of the quality-based metrics to pair with its low nursing hours. We looked at the percentage of residents experiencing pressure ulcers and we were disappointed. This facility was at approximately 150 percent of the national average in this area. This is likely a bad sign in light of the fact that so many pressure ulcers are preventable with better nursing care. This metric helped pull down this facility's nursing rating significantly.