Smith Medical Nursing Care Center

This nursing home received a short-term care grade which is stronger than its overall grade. We awarded this facility an above average grade of B in this category. This really helped its overall profile. In computing our short-term care ratings, we size up the facility's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. This rating is more often than not a useful assessment of a facility's ability to rehabilitate patients. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the number of residents who ultimately were able to return home from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.

One of the other reasons we rated this nursing home so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing score. Nursing proved to be its second best category grade. In that category, we gave this facility an B. Nursing ratings are based largely on quantity of nursing care available. This particular nursing home provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility Georgia in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a protocol of moving a patient even once per day.

This facility received a solid inspection report this year as well, with few dings from the applicable government inspectors. As a result, it earned one of our better grades in that category with a score of B-. These inspection scores weigh several factors, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can find more information about each of these issues by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This facility was hit with 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This means that the inspectors did not consider any of these deficiencies to be an immediate risk to patient safety or health. A couple minor deficiencies shouldn't stop you from considering a nursing home.

The final area we assessed is long-term care, which is a weak link for this facility. We gave this facility a grade of just D in our long-term care category. For long-term care residents, the facility's primary objective is to maintain patients' quality of life and keep them safe. After looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 99.19355 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is more than the majority of nursing homes. Surprisingly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility had fewer hospitalizations than the average nursing home. Unfortunately, some of its other scores in this category weren't as favorable as these.