The Waters of Roan Highlands

The Waters of Roan Highlands is an average-sized nursing home located in Roan Mountain, Tennessee. This nursing home received an overall grade of B, which is a good rating. Based on the data we reviewed, you could do much worse than this nursing home. This nursing home's impressive profile was highlighted by its inspection score, which we will address in the next paragraph.

This nursing home received a strong overall grade as described above, but we especially wanted to emphasize its nearly flawless government inspections in recent years. We gave it an A+ in this category. Arguably the most critical factor we look at in determining our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places with higher grades in this category most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. This nursing home received 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered severe. This tells you that the inspectors did not deem any of these deficiencies to pose an immediate threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home is also above average in the area of long-term care, where it was given a grade of B. It outperformed most nursing homes in this category. When facilities receive this type of grade in long-term care it is a good sign for resident care and suggests that the nursing home is well-staffed with nurses aids. After assessing the amount of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents healthy. Lastly, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.27 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

We also awarded this nursing home a decent score in the category of short-term care, where we gave it a grade of B-. Our short-term care ratings are meaningful for prospective residents in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually mandates higher levels of highly-skilled nursing services. This means a broad spectrum of services, spanning from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. This nursing home employs both physical therapists and registered nurses. Not all facilities employ these skilled professionals. Finally, we considered the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. This proved to be more of a strength for this facility. In fact, we found that it outperformed the majority of facilities with 49.9 percent of its residents returning home. This is a higher rate than most facilities.

The next area we assessed is nursing. We gave it a grade of C in that area. This is a decent grade in this category. The nursing rating weighs a handful of factors, most of which are associated with quantities of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 2.9 hours of nursing care per patient daily, which is well below average. Lastly, we also considered a few quality-based statistics in this category. While this nursing home didn't rank highly in terms of its nursing hours per resident, it fared much better in some of the quality measures we assessed. For example, in terms of the percentage of its patients experiencing pressure ulcers, this facility fared better than the national average. This is often a good indicator that a nursing home has sufficient quality controls in place. Pressure ulcers can typically be avoided with better nursing care.