Wiregrass Rehabilitation Center & Nursing Home

One of the many reasons this turned out to be a quality nursing home is that it received an A+ inspection grade. This is simply as good as it gets in this critical category. Arguably the most important factor we look at in calculating our inspection scores is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with better scores in this area most likely avoided the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. Although this facility had a few deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were major deficiencies based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

To add to its first-rate performance in other areas, we gave this facility a score of A for its short-term care grade. Our short-term care grade is commonly employed to measure a nursing home's rehabilitation services. To offer quality rehabilitation services, facilities generally must feature better levels of highly skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other types of therapists. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these types of nurses. On the other hand, based on the data this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The final metric we looked at in this category is the number of patients who returned home from the facility. We found that 5.7 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the nursing home on a permanent basis.

This facility also was awarded a impressive long-term care score. This actually is this nursing home's third most impressive category grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A-. Nursing homes that excel in long-term care tend to be well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to patients. On top of looking at the amount of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we analyzed the number of residents vaccinated against pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia is too frequently a life or death illness for nursing home patients so we like it when a nursing home doesn't leave this to chance. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. Indeed, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

Switching gears to our next area, this facility was awarded an excellent nursing rating. In fact, we gave it a grade of A- in that category, rounding out a straight A profile. Our nursing category analyzes quite a few subcategories, most of which are based on quantities of nurse staffing. This nursing home averages 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 nursing home 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 typically be prevented if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.