Sunporch of Smith County

On top of being an elite facility overall, this facility also excelled in our inspections category, where it earned an A+. Very few facilities performed this well in this category. Our inspection ratings are based on several items found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that score well in this category have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these places should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with risks to patient safety. It does not look like we have information about this nursing home's deficiencies. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Another reason we rated this nursing home so highly is that it received an A+ nursing grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this category. Our nursing score is based on many subcategories, but the primary consideration is the number of nurse hours spent with patients. This facility provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can often be prevented by offering better nursing care, such as employing a protocol of turning patients more often.

Building on its high-end profile, this nursing home also received a dominant long-term care grade, with a score of A. For residents looking for a permanent place to live as opposed to skilled nursing, long-term care is an important category. After assessing the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination statistics. This facility vaccinated 92.5 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which happens to be slightly below what we expected but still a respectable percentage. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

In our last category, this nursing home also received a very strong short-term care score, with an A-. This topped off a very strong profile. In the area of short-term care, we attempt to qualify measures of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. We look at a facility's skilled nursing services, including the ones performed by registered nurses and physical and occupational therapists. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. 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 discovered that 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home.