Washington County Nursing Home

Washington County Nursing Home is located in Chatom, Alabama. With an overall score of A, this is without a doubt a first-rate nursing home. We were so impressed with this nursing home that we ranked it in the top 20 percent of all facilities in the United States. This place also received consistently good scores in all of the major categories. Additional information about these categories is available below.

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A for our long-term care rating. Long-term care ratings in this range generally require both around the clock care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. In addition to considering the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This nursing home administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its residents. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents healthy. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Adding to its impressive category scores, this facility excelled in the area of inspections, where it earned a grade of A. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. Inspection grades weigh several factors, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can learn more about each of these items by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. While this place had a few minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those labeled as categories G through L. This means the inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Adding to its impressive resume, this nursing home also excelled in our nursing category. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A for that category. The nursing score assesses several subcategories, however, the primary one is the number of nurse hours per patient per week. With 4 hours of nursing care per resident per day, this nursing home surpassed the national average. Finally, this facility also excelled in several of the quality-based metrics we looked at. With fewer than five percent of its residents suffering from pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home Alabama in this category.

The last category we scored was short-term care. We awarded this facility one of our better grades in that category, with a grade of B. Even though this isn't as strong as many of this nursing home's other scores, it is nevertheless a perfectly acceptable score. Our short-term care scores are based in part on the nursing home's quantity of skilled nursing services. This includes a broad range of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, not to mention other types of therapy. We were pleased to find that this nursing home employs both registered nurses and physical therapists. The same can't be said for all nursing homes. The final datapoint we assessed in this area is the percentage of patients who returned home from the facility. We found that 0 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.