Salyersville Nursing and Rehabilitation Center

We awarded this nursing home one of our better grades in the area of long-term care, with an A. This is a much better grade than the nursing home's overall score, which was decent but not elite. When nursing homes receive a score in this range in this category it typically means it's well-staffed and is an overall good place to reside on a permanent basis. Once we finished looking at the amount of nursing care, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 97.066666 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is very impressive. Pneumonia is often a deadly ailment for nursing home residents so we like it when a nursing home does not take any chances. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This nursing home actually earned a solid government inspection report this year as well, with few major dings from the applicable government inspectors. As a result, it received one of our better grades in that category with a B-. We were surprised this facility earned multiple category grades of this caliber. We believe that one of the most critical factors in evaluating an inspection report is deficiencies. In this regard, we especially focus on the severity of the deficiencies. Sadly, this nursing home was assessed a category L deficiency, which was not what we expected given its inspection rating. This category of deficiency indicates CMS uncovered a widespread deficiency putting patient health or safety in immediate danger. While other aspects of this nursing home's inspection report were favorable, we have some reservations.

Another strength of this facility is its favorable grade in nursing. We awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of D. The nursing grade consists of quite a few components, however, the primary one is the level of nurse hours per patient per week. This particular nursing home offered a meager 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident daily. This number is significantly below average. Finally, we also looked at some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing ratings. This nursing home fared well in terms of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers.

The last area we rated was short-term care, which ended up being this facility's weakest area. It received an abysmal F for this area, which is clearly concerning. Our short-term care grades are presumably more meaningful for residents requiring a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually requires additional skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not just nursing services, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. Not surprisingly, we found that this nursing home provides far less physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than the average facility. Finally, we considered the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that just 3.1 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.