The Springs of Mooresville

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A+ for our inspections rating. Inspection ratings are tied to several items located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that excel in this area have few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these facilities should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. Although this nursing home had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none of them were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Compounding its first-rate accomplishments in other areas, we awarded this facility a grade of A- for its long-term care score. Facilities that receive this type of grade in this category tend to provide consistent around the clock care to make sure residents are kept in good health. After looking at the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we then analyzed the facility's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents out of the hospital. Finally, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Turning to an additional strength for this facility, we gave them one of our stronger scores in our short-term care category as well, with a grade of B+. In computing these short-term care grades, we quantify the nursing home's skilled nursing services, including those performed by registered nurses, speech therapists, physical therapists and other types of skilled professionals. The objective is to create a scale for sizing up the rehabilitation services of nursing homes. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final statistic we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients that who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. We found that 6.7 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

The final area we analyzed is nursing. This facility was given an above average nursing grade in our assessment, with a grade of B-. Even though this wasn't quite as elite as some of its other grades, this is still a respectable score in this area. Nursing scores are heavily correlated with levels of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident on a daily basis. This figure is significantly below average. Finally, nursing grades also consider quality-based measures, such as preventing major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours, this facility performed admirably in the area of preventing major falls. This is often a reliable indicator that a place has sufficient quality controls in place. Many falls can be avoided if a nursing home supplies enough nurses aids to assist its patients.