Blue Ridge of Sumter

We want to draw your attention to the fact that this nursing home really outperformed its overall score in the category of inspections. In fact, it received an excellent inspection report this year. As a result, it received one of our highest grades in this area with a grade of A-. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in determining our inspection scores. One of those factors is deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of these deficiencies is usually more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some can be relatively minor. This particular nursing home received 4 deficiencies on its inspection report. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is always a good sign.

Additionally, we awarded this facility a B in our long-term care category. This is one of our better grades. When facilities receive a score in this range in long-term care it generally means it has plenty of staff and is a quality place to live on a permanent basis. In addition to assessing the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 94.41861 percent of its residents, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia is often a deadly ailment for nursing home patients so we strongly prefer when a nursing home doesn't roll the dice on this issue. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This facility's third best category was its short-term care score, where it received a B-. Short-term care grades are commonly employed to assess a nursing home's rehabilitation services In order to have quality rehabilitation services, facilities generally must have better levels of skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing includes registered nurses, physical therapists, occupational therapists and other highly trained professionals. Unfortunately, this place was below average in terms of its level of registered nurse and physical therapy hours provided to its patients based on the metrics we assessed. Finally, we looked at the percentage of residents who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 0 percent of this facility's patients returned home. At most facilities, closer to half of their residents are able to return home so this figure is below average.

The final category we rated is nursing, ended up being this nursing home's worst category. We awarded this facility a grade of D in this category. Our nursing grade weighs a handful of subcategories, most of which are tied to levels of nurse staffing. This place averaged a meager 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This is well below average. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in calculating our nursing scores. This facility performed well when it comes to avoiding pressure ulcers and major falls. Many consider these statistics to be indicators of the quality of nursing care.