Western North Carolina Baptist Home

We also found that this facility excelled in our short-term care rating. We awarded them an impressive grade of A+ in this category. In calculating our short-term care scores, we analyze the nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists speech therapists and other licensed professionals. This grade is frequently a meaningful measure of the facility's rehabilitation services. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not all facilities employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, according to the data they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the number of residents that eventually returned home from this facility. We found that 7.5 percent of this facility's patients were able to return home.

Adding to its impressive category scores, this facility also excelled in the area of inspections, where it earned a grade of A-. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in calculating our inspection ratings. One of those factors is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more important than the number of deficiencies, as some can be quite minor. While this nursing home had a few minor dings on its inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones labeled as categories G through L. This tells you that CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. Keep in mind that deficiency-free inspection reports are uncommon in this industry.

This facility received a very good nursing grade this year as well. It received one of our better scores in that category with a grade of B+. In determining a nursing home's nursing rating, we assess the quantity of hours nurses commit to residents as well as the skill levels of those nurses. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

In the final area, we gave this facility a A- for its long-term care score. This topped off a very strong profile. In a long-term care setting, the facility's primary objective is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. In addition to assessing the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home gave the vaccine to 72.97298 percent of its patients. This is a few points below what we anticipated but still a reasonably acceptable figure. While its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we hoped for, this place was able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.