Sylacauga Health and Rehab Services

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 weigh several factors included in a facility's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the number and severity of deficiencies. Places with higher scores in this category usually have few of these severe deficiencies. While this facility had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are labeled as categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you the inspectors didn't deem 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 was awarded impressive scores in the area of long-term care as well. Consequently, we awarded it one of our most superb grades in that category with a score of A-. Facilities that do well in long-term care tend to provide residents with more supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. Once we assessed the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 94.51755 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Vaccines are critical to keeping residents healthy. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

In addition, this facility also received favorable nursing grades this year. In fact, we awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B+. We looked at the skill-level of nurses employed by the nursing home, as well as the number of hours those nurses worked with residents, in calculating our rating in this area. This facility 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 nursing home 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 frequently be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The next category we graded is short-term care. In this category, we awarded this nursing home a decent grade of B-. This actually ended up being this nursing home's weakest area. Our short-term care scores are believed to be most critical for patients needing rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation typically mandates higher levels of skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes not only nursing, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this nursing home employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these types of nurses. However, based on the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last statistic we looked at in this area is the percentage of patients that who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. We found that just 4.6 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.