Tifton Health and Rehabilitation Center

Tifton Health and Rehabilitation Center is an average-sized facility located in Tifton, Georgia. This nursing home was awarded an overall grade of B-, which is a middle of the road score. Based on our ratings, this place ought to meet the needs of many people. This place was better in some categories than others, but it did not have any bad scores in any of the major categories discussed below. More information about these categories can be found below.

We want to draw your attention to the fact that this facility outperformed its overall score in the area of inspections. In fact, it received a nearly flawless inspection report this year. As a result, we gave it one of our best scores in this category with an A. Arguably the most important factor we look at in determining our inspection grades is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Facilities with better grades in this area typically avoided the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. Fortunately, although this facility had some minor dings on its report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This means CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. We should point out that deficiency-free inspections are uncommon in this industry.

This facilities second best category is long-term care. We awarded it a grade of B- in this category. This is basically a middle of the pack score in this area. In calculating our long-term care scores, we assess the facility's personal care services. One of the criteria we considered after nurse's aid hours is vaccinations. Thankfully, this facility provided the pneumonia vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. Unfortunately, this place's hospitalization rate was not quite as favorable. We found that this facility had 2.43 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days.

This nursing home's next highest category is its short-term care score, where it was awarded a B-. Our short-term care grade is typically employed to judge a nursing home's rehabilitation services In order to offer high-end rehabilitation services, nursing homes generally must provide higher levels of skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, speech therapists and other highly trained professionals. One reason for this facility's strong score in this category is that it provides more care with registered nurses to its residents than the average nursing home. Lastly, we looked at the percentage of residents that returned home from this nursing home. We found that 38.3 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home. This figure was actually below the national average.

Switching gears to our last category, this nursing home was given a C for nursing, which is an acceptable rating. We assessed the skill-level of nurses working for the facility, in addition to the quantity of time those nurses were with patients, in computing our grade in this area. This particular nursing home provided 3.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing rating also includes relevant quality-based measures. While this facility excelled in terms of quantity of nursing hours, it fell short in some of the statistics that related to quality. This nursing home's nursing score was pulled down by its subpar performance in the area of minimizing pressure ulcers. In fact, we found that 18.3 percent of this nursing home's patients experienced pressure ulcers. Since some pressure ulcers can be avoided with proper nursing protocols, we reduce a nursing home's nursing grade when we find this kind of prevalence of pressure ulcers.