South Roanoke Nursing Home

On top of receiving a strong overall grade, this facility also earned an elite long-term care grade. We awarded them one of our better grades in that area, with an impressive grade of A-. When facilities receive this type of grade in this category it is typically a good sign for resident care and indicates that the facility is well-staffed with nurses and aids. After assessing the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping patients out of the hospital. Clearly, this nursing home 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 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This nursing home also performed well in the area of inspections. It received a nearly flawless government inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our highest scores in that category with an B+. Few nursing homes with an overall score in this range performed as well in multiple categories. Inspection ratings take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these issues by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This means the government inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also received a strong nursing score. In fact, we awarded it an above average grade of B in this area. The nursing grade weighs several factors, but the primary one is the number of nurse hours spent with patients. This particular nursing home provided 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can typically be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The next area we graded is short-term care, in which this nursing home was given a grade of B. This facility turned out to be relatively strong across the board. With our short-term care assessment, we seek to forge a sound measure for rehabilitation services. In this process, we look at the facility's scope of skilled nursing services, including both registered nurses and physical therapy, as well as respiratory therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.