The Terraces at Peachtree Hills Place

This facility received a strong overall grade as described above, but we especially wanted to emphasize its excellent short-term care grade. We gave them an impressive grade of A in this category. Our short-term care ratings are based on the facility's quantity of skilled nursing services. This means a vast spectrum of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, not to mention other forms of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these skilled professionals. However, based on the data they provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we considered the number of patients who returned home from this facility. We found that 6.3 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.

This nursing home also performed well in the area of inspections. It received a nearly flawless government inspection report this year. It received one of our highest grades in that category with an A-. Few nursing homes with an overall grade in this range performed this well in multiple categories. These inspection scores take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies, substantiated complaints and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these factors by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. Unfortunately, it does not appear that we were able to find deficiency data for this facility. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

The third category we looked at was long-term care. This nursing home received an above average long-term care grade, with a B in this category. For residents seeking a permanent residence rather than skilled nursing, long-term care grades are an important measure. Once we assessed the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 20.689653 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is a bit lower than we anticipated but still a respectable figure. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

The final area we looked at was nursing, where this facility was given a B-. This is this nursing home's weakest area. This is still not the end of the world. Nursing grades are primarily tied to a facility's level of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages just 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day, which is not an impressive total. Finally, our nursing scores also factor in some quality-focused measures. We especially look at the percentage of patients who experienced pressure ulcers and major falls. Sometimes these metrics are measures of the quality of nursing care, since superior care can reduce these issues.