The Pines Nursing and Rehabilitation Center

The Pines Nursing and Rehabilitation Center is a large nursing home in Hot Springs, Arkansas. This facility was given an extremely poor overall score based on the data we assessed. Hot Springs received a city grade of B-, so there are some other options in the city worth considering. We would not blame you if you are ready to stop reading and find another nursing home. However, if you want to learn more about this facility's category grades, inspection grades are discussed in the next section.

While this place's overall grade was as bad as it gets, it actually didn't perform terribly in the area of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a B- for that category, which is one of our better scores. Inspection ratings account for several factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. One of the most important criteria we consider is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. While this place had some deficiencies on its report, none of them were severe based on CMS' scale. A couple minor deficiencies are not necessarily the end of the world.

We were also stunned to find that this facility earned a reasonably solid long-term care grade this year. We awarded it a grade of C in that category. For patients looking for a permanent place to live as opposed to skilled nursing, long-term care is a very important category. On top of considering the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 99.45799 percent of its patients, which is more than most nursing homes. The last statistic we looked at is its hospitalization rate. Although it had 2.08 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, its risk adjusted statistic was not too far off the national average.

We were also pleasantly surprised to find that this facility received a reasonably solid short-term care rating in our assessment. We gave it a grade of C in that category. In determining our short-term care grades, we look at the nursing home's levels of skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other types of therapists. This area is more often than not a useful measure of the nursing home's rehabilitation. One of this nursing home's strength is that it offers more hours of physical therapy per week to its residents. Finally, we considered the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 41.8 percent of this facility's residents returned home. At most facilities, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this is below average.

Turning to our final category, we awarded this nursing home a D for nursing. This was the nursing home's weakest category score. Our nursing score includes quite a few data points, however, the paramount consideration is the quantity of nurse hours spent with patients. Quantity of nursing care does not appear to be the problem here. Based on the data, it looks like this nursing home provides an above average 4.2 hours per patient on a daily basis. This is more nursing care than most places offer. Despite performing well in terms of nursing hours, this facility had poor scores in some of the quality-based measures we looked at in computing our nursing scores. We looked at the percent of residents sustaining pressure ulcers and we were very disappointed. This facility was at roughly 150 percent of the national average in this statistic. This is likely a bad sign when you consider that many bed sores are believed to be preventable with better nursing care. This statistic helped pull down this facility's nursing grade quite a bit.