Wellpark at Shannondale

In addition to being an elite nursing home overall, this facility also excelled in the area of inspections, where it received a grade of A+. Few facilities fared this well in this category. Arguably the most significant factor we consider in computing our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Facilities with higher grades in this area most likely dodged the most severe deficiencies involving patient abuse or death. This place was assessed 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe. This means that CMS didn't consider any of these deficiencies to pose an immediate threat to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also was given an A+ for its short-term care grade. Our short-term care grades are thought to be most meaningful for people needing rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation usually requires additional highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not merely nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as 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 item we considered in this category is the number of residents that ultimately were able to return home from the facility. We found that 6.1 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

This nursing home also fared very well in the area of long-term care, where we awarded it a grade of A. Only a select group of facilities performed better in this category. Long-term care ratings of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine healthcare services. Once we assessed the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination records. Unfortunately, it doesn't look like this facility submitted vaccination data. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

In the last area, this nursing home also received a first-rate nursing grade, with an A. This finished off an elusive straight A report card. The nursing grade is based on numerous factors. The most heavily weighted one is the quantity of hours nurses spend with patients. This particular nursing home provided 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality measures and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any place Tennessee in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can typically be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as having a protocol of moving patients more often.