Smoky Mountain Health and Rehabilitation Center

Smoky Mountain Health and Rehabilitation Center is one of a mere three available nursing homes in Waynesville, North Carolina. This nursing home was awarded an overall grade of B+, which is very favorable grade. In our view, this facility looks like a good fit for quite a few people. The best part of this nursing home's impressive report card was its inspection grade. Inspection grades are discussed in the next section

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating these inspection scores. One of those factors is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some of these end up being relatively minor. While this place had a few deficiencies on its inspection report, none were major deficiencies based on CMS' deficiency scale. The fact that the deficiencies were relatively minor made us feel better about this inspection report.

In addition, this facility received high marks in the category of short-term care. Consequently, it was given one of our most impressive grades in that category with a grade of A+. In our short-term care grade, we strive to create a meaningful measure for rehabilitation. In doing so, we look at the nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as occupational therapy. This nursing home is markedly above the national average in terms of its quantity of both physical therapy and registered nurse hours offered to its residents. In fact, it provided roughly one and a half times as much care per resident from both of these care providers than the average facility provided. The last statistic we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We found that it performed as well as just about any facility in North Carolina in this area with 58.2 percent of its patients returning home.

This facility received a very good nursing grade this year as well. It received one of our better scores in that category with a grade of B. Nursing ratings are based largely on nurse staffing levels. This nursing home provided 3.5 hours of nursing care per patient on a daily basis. At least one fourth of this care was provided by registered nurses, which are skilled nurses. This is a high percentage of skilled nursing. In determining our ratings, we apply more weight to care provided by registered nurses. Lastly, we also factored a few quality measures into our nursing grades. This place was relatively weak in two of the major areas we focus on, with below average scores for minimizing its residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. These areas are generally reliable indicators of the quality of nursing care provided.

The next category we graded was long-term care, which turned out to be a weak spot for this facility. We awarded this nursing home a D in long-term care, making this the nursing home's worst category grade. We would nevertheless suggest that you look at the bigger picture. In a long-term care setting, the primary goal is to maintain residents' quality of life and keep them safe. In addition to looking at the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients. Surprisingly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 0.92 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this nursing home has less hospitalizations than most nursing homes. Unfortunately, some of its other scores in this category weren't as favorable as these.