Soddy-Daisy Health Care Center

This nursing home received a solid overall grade as described above, but we really wanted to emphasize its nearly flawless government inspections in recent years. We awarded them an A+ in this category. Perhaps the most significant factor we consider in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places with better scores in this category most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. This nursing home was assessed 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be major deficiencies. This indicates that the inspectors didn't consider any of these deficiencies to create an immediate risk to resident safety or health. A couple of minor deficiencies shouldn't lead you to cross a nursing home off your list.

This facility's short-term care score is one of its better scores. The facility received a B- in this category. In calculating our short-term care scores, we analyze a nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other licensed professionals. This grade is typically a useful assessment of the facility's rehabilitation. One reason for this facility's strong score in this category is that it provides a greater volume of physical therapist hours to its residents than the average nursing home. The last item we assessed in this area is the percentage of residents that ultimately were able to return home from the nursing home. It performed better than most facilities in this metric with 55.3 percent of its patients returning home. At most facilities, fewer than half of their short-stay residents are able to return home.

We gave this nursing home just a D for our long-term care score. This is not one of our better scores. In a long-term care environment, the nursing home's primary goal is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. After assessing the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination data. We were pleased to learn that this nursing home vaccinated 99.26199 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Surprisingly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 1.28 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility had fewer hospitalizations than many nursing homes. Unfortunately, a few of its other scores in this category weren't as favorable as these.

Moving on to the fourth category, this nursing home really did not fare well. Due to a bottom of the barrel grade of F in nursing, this was this facility's poorest category. Nursing grades are primarily based on a facility's nurse staffing. This place averaged a meager 3.2 hours of nursing care per patient per day. This is well below average. In addition to ranking below average in nursing hours per resident, this place also had poor marks in the quality-based metrics we looked at in computing our nursing grades. We looked at the percentage of residents sustaining pressure ulcers and major falls. This facility was at roughly 1.5 times the national average in both of these metrics. This is a bad sign when you consider that many falls and bed sores are preventable with better nursing care. These statistics helped pull down this nursing home's nursing rating significantly.