Senator Ben Atchley State Veterans' Home

Senator Ben Atchley State Veterans' Home is a large government-owned nursing home located in Knoxville, Tennessee. This is a great facility. We gave this it an overall grade of B+, which is very good grade. This ended up being one of the five best facilities in the city. This place's strong profile was highlighted by its inspection score, which we will address in the next section.

One of the reasons this place turned out to be a great nursing home is it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. Perhaps the most critical factor we look at in computing our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher grades in this category typically dodged the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even 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. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Among this nursing home's other achievements is its first-rate long-term care score. We gave them one of our more impressive grades in that area, with a grade of A. Long-term care ratings in this range generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. In addition to looking at the impressive quantity of care provided by aids and other staff at this nursing home, we also were happy with the nursing home's vaccination data. By way of example, this nursing home administered the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its residents, which is what we like to see. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. While it had 1.92 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, its risk adjusted score was better than the majority of nursing homes due to it having some more complicated patients.

Another strong feature for this facility is that it received an impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of B+. Our nursing grade analyzes quite a few factors, many of which are based on quantities of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 4.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day, which was among the highest totals we found. Finally, we also looked at nursing quality measures in determining our nursing scores. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We look at these datapoints as reliable indicators of the caliber of nursing care offered, since better care tends to reduce these problems.

The final category we assessed was short-term care. In that category, we gave this facility a solid grade of C. This actually is this facility's weakest category. Our short-term care scores are based in part on a nursing home's quantity of skilled nursing services. This includes a wide scope of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, not to mention other types of therapy. This nursing home employs both physical therapists and registered nurses. Not all facilities employ these skilled professionals. The final metric we considered in this category is the number of residents who were able to return home from the nursing home. We found that just 27.2 percent of this facility's residents returned home. This figure was below average.