Virginia Gay Hospital

In addition to being an elite nursing home overall, this nursing home performed well in the area of inspections, where it received an A+. Few facilities fared this well in this area. Inspection ratings are based on many items found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Facilities that score well in this category tend to have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these facilities should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. Fortunately, although this facility had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G through L. This means CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Another one of this facility's impressive category scores came in the area of long-term care. We gave them one of our better scores in that category, with a score of B+. Nursing homes that excel in long-term care typically provide residents with more supervision and stay on top of routine healthcare services. After we finished assessing the volume of care provided by nurses, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination record. This facility vaccinated 99.17355 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is very impressive. Pneumonia sadly is often a life threatening illness for nursing home patients so we like it when a nursing home does not roll the dice on this issue. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

In addition, this facility also received favorable nursing grades this year. In fact, we awarded them one of our better scores in that area, with a grade of B+. Our nursing rating focuses on the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We factor in both the levels of skill of the nurses as well as the quantity of hours spent with patients. This facility 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 place performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can generally be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The next area we rated is short-term care. We awarded this nursing home one of our better grades in this area, with a grade of B. Even though this isn't as dominant as a few of this facility's other grades, it is nevertheless a positive score. In the category of short-term care, we endeavor to assess indicators of a nursing home's rehabilitation services. We assess a facility's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical, occupational and other therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the number of residents who returned home from this nursing home. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.