PruittHealth - Moultrie

This nursing home received a solid overall grade as described above, but we really wanted to point out its nearly flawless government inspections in recent years. We awarded them an A+ in this category. Our inspection ratings weigh a host of factors found on a nursing home's inspection report. One key criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Nursing homes with better grades in this area typically have very few of these severe deficiencies. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its inspection report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G through L. This means the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. A few minor dings aren't the end of the world.

This facility also received an impressive short-term care score. In fact, we awarded it a grade of B in this area, which happens to be one of our better. In determining our short-term care scores, we look at a facility's levels of highly skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists respiratory therapists and other licensed professionals. This grade is often a fair assessment of the facility's rehabilitation services. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the percentage of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 5.3 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

This nursing home's third most favorable category ended up being its long-term care grade, where it was awarded a grade of C. For long-term care residents, the nursing home's primary objective is to maintain residents' quality of life and keep them safe. On top of considering the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. We were a bit alarmed this facility administered the vaccine to a relatively low 82.432434 percent of its residents. Nevertheless, this facility excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. It had only 0 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

The last area we graded is nursing. In that category, we gave this facility a grade of C. In calculating a facility's nursing grade, we look at the quantity of hours nurses commit to patients and the levels of training of the nurses. This nursing home provides 0.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Lastly, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as preventing major falls. Although this place did not have as many nursing hours per resident as many of the other nursing homes we looked at, it was still better than average in the area of avoiding major falls. This is often a reliable indicator of how carefully a nursing home's nursing staff is tending to its residents. Major falls can many times be avoided if more nurses aids and safety protocols are in place.