Universal Health Care/Fletcher

Universal Health Care/Fletcher is the sole option we identified in Fletcher, North Carolina. We awarded it an overall grade of B-, which is a middle of the pack rating. In our view, this facility looks like a solid choice for most people. One of the major highlights of this facility's profile is its exemplary inspection grade, which you can find in the next section.

The primary reason this turned out to be a decent nursing home is that it received an excellent inspection score. In fact, its inspection score was far superior to its overall grade. In our inspections category, we gave this facility a grade of A+. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating these inspection ratings. One critical factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some end up being quite minor. This nursing home was assessed 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This tells you that the government inspectors did not deem any of the deficiencies to pose an immediate risk to resident health or safety. We should note that deficiency-free inspections are uncommon in this industry.

This facility also performed favorably in the area of short-term care, with top notch grade of A- in this area. Our short-term care grades are critical for people seeking rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally requires additional skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means a broad spectrum of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. When we assessed this facility's nursing hours, we found it offered more care from registered nurses than most nursing homes. The last statistic we looked at in this category is the percentage of patients who who were able to eventually return home from the nursing home. We found that it performed as well as just about any facility in North Carolina in this metric with 65.6 percent of its patients returning home. Unfortunately, at most facilities, less than half of their short-term residents return home.

Another strength of this facility is its favorable grade in nursing. We gave them one of our better scores in that area, with an D. Our nursing grade is largely associated with the facility's nurse staffing. This place offered just 2.8 hours of nursing care per patient per day. This figure is significantly below average. To go along with its subpar totals in the area of nursing hours per resident, this place also didn't fare as well in the quality-based measures we looked at in determining our nursing ratings. We looked at the percent of residents experiencing major falls and pressure ulcers. This nursing home had more falls and pressure ulcers than the average facility.

This facility's least impressive category was long-term care, which is the final area we assessed. We gave it a lowly F in this category. Despite a few solid grades in other areas, this score is nevertheless of a concern so we felt obligated to draw your attention to it. In a long-term care environment, the nursing home's primary objective is to keep patients as healthy and safe as possible. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate patients. Once we concluded our assessment of the amount of care provided by nurses, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination statistics. We were optimistic to find that this facility vaccinated 98.09886 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Surprisingly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. With just 0.61 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, this facility had less hospitalizations than the average nursing home. Unfortunately, some of its other scores in this category weren't as favorable as these.