Snu Armstrong Co Memorial Hospital

In addition to being a great overall grade, this facility also received A+ health inspections in recent years. Its inspections were virtually flawless. Inspection grades account for several factors found on a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Facilities with higher scores in this category generally have very few severe deficiencies. This nursing home received 7 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe deficiencies. This indicates that CMS didn't consider any of these deficiencies to pose an immediate threat to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

An additional reason we rated this nursing home so highly is that it received an A+ short-term care score. This is just about as elite as it gets in this area. In calculating these short-term care scores, we assess the facility's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, respiratory therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The goal is to create a measure for sizing up the rehabilitation services of various facilities. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last item we assessed in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return home. We found that 7 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

We also awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for its nursing grade. We scrutinized the qualifications of nurses working for the facility, as well as the quantity of hours the nurses spent with patients, in determining our score in this category. This nursing home provides 0.8 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as employing a protocol of moving a patient more often.

In our last area, we gave this nursing home an A+ for its long-term care grade. This wrapped up a first-rate profile. Long-term care grades in this range generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. One of the statistics we considered on top of nursing hours is vaccines. Unfortunately, it does not look like this facility provided data regarding vaccinations. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.