Bluffton Regional Medical Center Skilled Nursing Care

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. Our inspection ratings are tied to several datapoints located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that score well in this area typically have very few deficiencies on their reports. Most importantly, these nursing homes generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. This particular nursing home had just a single deficiency on its inspection report and it was not one deemed to pose a threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

We also wanted to emphasize the fact that this facility fared very well in our short-term care rating. We awarded them an exemplary score of A+ in this category. Short-term care scores are meaningful for prospective residents looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically requires more skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means a broad range of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every nursing home employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Finally, we assessed the percentage of residents who who were able to eventually return home from this nursing home. We found that 7.5 percent of this facility's residents returned home.

We also want to emphasize the fact that this nursing home received a top-shelf grade of A in our long-term care category. In a long-term care setting, the nursing home's primary goal is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. After looking at the amount of care provided by aids and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination record. It does not appear that this nursing home submitted information about vaccinations. Clearly, this facility is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

In our final category, this facility also was given an excellent nursing rating, with an A. This wrapped up a very impressive profile. The nursing rating is based on several components, however, the primary consideration is the level of nurse hours spent with patients. This nursing home averages 0.8 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed certain nursing quality measures in computing our nursing grades. These include minimizing residents' pressure ulcers and major falls. We look at these statistics as good measures of the quality of nursing care provided, since better care tends to reduce these problems.