Senior Care Beltline

While this facility's overall grade was decent, it really excelled in the area of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A- for that category, which is one of our highest scores. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in determining these inspection scores. One of those factors is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies can be quite insignificant. While this facility had some deficiencies on its inspection report, none of them were major deficiencies based on CMS' scale. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in this industry.

In addition, we gave this facility a B+ in our short-term care category. This happens to be one of our better scores. In determining these short-term care ratings, we analyze the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of therapists. The objective is to devise a scale for comparing the rehabilitation services of various nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last item we considered in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

An additional reason we rated this nursing home so highly is that it earned an A+ nursing grade. This is as good as it gets in this area. The nursing grade weighs quite a few components, most of which are tied to levels of nurse staffing. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Lastly, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in determining our nursing grades. This facility performed very well in terms of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. We consider these areas to be good indicators of the quality of nursing care.

Moving on to the next area, we gave this nursing home a D in long-term care. This was the nursing home's weakest category rating. Of course, this category pulled down the facility's overall grade to a certain degree. For long-term care residents, the primary objective is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we also looked at the percentage of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility provided the vaccine to 98.56115 percent of its residents. To our surprise, this nursing home also keeps its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days. Unfortunately, a few of its other scores in this category were not as favorable as these.