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, this nursing home offers both physical therapists and registered nurses. Not all facilities offer both. The final item we assessed in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We found that 7.2 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility excelled in our nursing rating. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. We weighed the qualifications of nurses at the facility, as well as the quantity of time those nurses were with patients, in calculating our rating in this category. This facility provided 0.8 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at 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 facility the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as having a system of moving residents even once per day.

In the final category, this nursing home also was awarded an impressive long-term care score, with an A. This completed a first-rate profile. For patients in need of a permanent place to live rather than skilled nursing, long-term care grades are an important measure. Once we assessed the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination records. It does not appear that this nursing home provided information about vaccinations. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.