Wilkes Regional Medical Center Skilled Nursing

On top of being a great nursing home overall, it also earned A+ health inspections recently. Its inspections were nearly flawless. Perhaps the most critical factor we consider in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Facilities with better scores in this area most likely avoided the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This place was hit with 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe. This tells you that the government inspectors didn't consider any of the deficiencies to pose an imminent threat to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This nursing home also received an A+ for its short-term care score. In determining our short-term care scores, we analyze the facility's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other types of therapists. This grade is generally a solid measure of a facility's rehabilitation services. Fortunately, this nursing home offers both physical therapists and registered nurses. Not all facilities offer both. The final metric we looked at in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We found that 6.2 percent of this nursing home's patients were able to return home.

The third area we analyzed is long-term care. Adding to its top-shelf resume, this facility also excelled in that area. In fact, we awarded it a grade of of A in the category. For prospective residents seeking a permanent place to live as opposed to rehabilitation, long-term care is an important category. After considering the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we turned to the nursing home's vaccination records. It does not appear that this facility provided information about vaccinations. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

The final category we scored was nursing, where this nursing home was given an A-. This topped off a very strong profile. Not many facilities earned an A- or better in all four categories. In computing a nursing home's nursing score, we weigh the number of hours nurses are caring for patients and the level of skill of the nurses. This particular nursing home provided 0.6 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at certain nursing quality measures in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We look at these areas as predictive measures of the quality of nursing care being provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.