The Waters of Scottsburg

Although we did not rate this nursing home favorably overall, we want to point out its much more favorable nursing score this year. We gave it a B in this area, which was much better than its overall grade. Our nursing rating looks at the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We weigh both the levels of training of the nurses as well as the number of hours spent with residents. This particular nursing home 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 facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can frequently be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

We were also pleasantly surprised to award this nursing home a relatively favorable inspection grade as well. We gave it a B- in this category, which was much better than its overall score. Our inspection ratings are tied to several datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Deficiencies are an important thing to look for on these reports. Severe deficiencies indicate a risk to patient safety. This nursing home received 8 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This tells you that the inspectors did not deem any of these deficiencies to create an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A couple minor deficiencies are not necessarily the end of the world.

We awarded this nursing home a grade of just D for our short-term care grade. This is well below average in this category. Our short-term care ratings are considered to be most important for residents in need of rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation typically requires more highly-skilled nursing. This includes not merely nursing services, but also physical and speech therapy, as well as other types of therapy. With a score in this range for this area, we weren't surprised to find that this facility was well below average in two of the key staffing metrics we assess. The nursing home provided substantially fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per patient than most nursing homes. The last metric we looked at in this category is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 4.9 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these poor statistics sunk this facility's short-term care score.

The final category we analyzed was long-term care, turned out to be this facility's worst category. We gave this facility a grade of D in this area. For patients in need of a permanent residence as opposed to rehabilitation, long-term care grades are a key measure. One of the factors we considered on top of nursing hours was vaccinations. Fortunately, this nursing home provided the pneumonia vaccine to 99.51219 percent of its patients. Surprisingly, this nursing home also keeps its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. Unfortunately, a few of its other scores in this category were not as favorable as these.