Huntsville’s Worst-Rated Nursing Homes
If you are thinking about placing your elderly parent into a nursing home in Huntsville, Alabama, you need to do your research. Some nursing homes in Huntsville provide excellent care and others have failing scores that result in preventable deaths. This article breaks down the worst-rated nursing homes in Huntsville and also highlights the best-rated ones.
But first — let’s talk about the methodology for determining which nursing homes are worst and which are the best.
The Nursing Home Rating Methodology
Fortunately, the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) has created a rating a system, called the Five-Star Quality Rating System. This system gives the public a good idea of the quality of care provided at nursing homes. CMS’s Nursing Home Care Compare website features this rating system that gives each nursing home a rating of between 1 and 5 stars.
Nursing homes with 5 stars are considered to have much above average quality and nursing homes with 1 star are considered to have quality much below average.
According to the CMS Nursing Home Fact Sheet, the Five-Star Quality Rating System measures several types of data in determining each nursing home’s ranking. These include:
- State health inspection ratings
- Nursing home staffing levels
- Quality measurements based on residents’ minimum data sets (MDS)
So how do Huntsville nursing homes measure up? We will start with the worst rated nursing homes:
Huntsville’s Worst Rated Nursing Homes
Windsor House: Windsor House is one of Huntsville’s nursing homes with only a 1 star rating. Windsor House’s subpar rating is due to repeated citations by state health inspectors and for their failure to maintain adequate staffing. You can review their most recent inspection results here. Inadequate staffing is a continued problem for Windsor House, which can put residents at risk of suffering pressure ulcers, dehydration, and injuries from falls.
Signature HealthCare at Whitesburg Gardens: Whitesburg Gardens also comes in with a 1 star rating. Their low rating with CMS appears to be solely due to state health inspections. Their staffing levels and quality measures are satisfactory. However, their repeated citations by health inspectors presumably brought their rating down to the lowest possible aggregate score. Review their most recent inspection results here.
Valley View Health & Rehab: Valley View also has a 1 star rating. While their staffing levels are adequate, Valley View suffers from poor performance in health inspections and subpar results from quality measures. Interestingly, Valley View performed somewhat satisfactorily in quality measures for short-term residents. However, long term residents (those who stayed more than 100 days) declined at a sharp rate, including an average of 11.1% developing pressure ulcers.
AHC Millenium: Millenium likewise has a 1 star rating. Similar to Valley View, their staffing levels are adequate, but they suffer from very poor performance in quality measures. Furthermore, their poor quality measures are for both short term and long term residents. They have a 14% pressure ulcer rate. They also have 6% UTI rate, which is three times the national average.
Huntsville’s Best Rated Nursing Homes
Magnolia Trace: Magnolia Trace carries a 4 star rating with CMS. While their staffing levels and inspection results are both satisfactory, their quality measurement scores are excellent. Residents at Magnolia Trace exceeded their expected outcomes, including both short term and long term residents. In particular, their long term residents did very well, mostly avoiding complications such as UTIs, pressure ulcers, and fractures from falls.
Redstone Village: Redstone Village likewise was rated as 4 stars. Redstone’s high performance was mostly due to above average staffing levels and very satisfactory results during health inspections. They only had two health inspection deficiencies in the last three years, but both of those were actually self-reported.
Brookshire Healthcare Center: Likewise rated as 4 stars, Brookshire’s measurements present a bit of a conundrum. Their staffing levels were below average, but their health inspections and their quality measurements were both well above average. This arguably suggests that while the nursing home may be understaffed, the people working there are going above and beyond to provide quality care.
*Huntsville does not have any nursing homes with a 5 star rating.
Need Further Information?
Our attorneys have more than one hundred lawsuits against Huntsville nursing homes involving allegations of nursing home abuse and neglect. If you ever need guidance about a dispute with a nursing home, please contact us to schedule a free consultation. In addition, consider the following resources which we hope you will find helpful:
- Our Complete Guide to Nursing Home Abuse. Written by attorney Bart Siniard, this guidebook provides everything you should know if you suspect your loved one is being harmed in a nursing home.
- CMS’s Care Compare website that provided the data for this blog post.
- The Alabama Dept. of Public Health’s Instructions for filing a Nursing Home Complaint
**All of the information provided in this article is current as of August 2023 and is based on data from the Care Compare website.