Carlyle Senior Care of Kingstree

To pair with its favorable overall performance, we gave this facility an A+ for our inspections rating. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in computing these inspection grades. One of those factors is health deficiencies. It should be noted that the severity of the deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the number of deficiencies, as some are quite insignificant. 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.

Another one of this facility's quality category grades came in the area of long-term care. We awarded them one of our more positive grades in that area, with a grade of B+. Facilities that excel in this category typically are well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to residents. On top of assessing the volume of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This nursing home vaccinated 97.26028 percent of its residents, which is what we like to see. Pneumonia is often a dangerous ailment for nursing home residents so we prefer when a facility doesn't leave its residents vulnerable. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low figure.

This nursing home's next best category was nursing. We awarded it a grade of B- in this category. While this wasn't quite as good as some of its other category grades, this isn't a bad score either. When calculating a nursing home's nursing score, we assess the quantity of hours nurses commit to residents as well as the levels of training of those nurses. This nursing home provides 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a much lower figure than we are used to seeing. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics. Although this nursing home got dinged a bit for nursing hours, it actually excelled in a few of these quality-based metrics. With fewer than five percent of its patients experiencing pressure ulcers, it did remarkably well in this subcategory. This is often an indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as by employing a policy of moving a resident more frequently.

The last area we assessed is short-term care, which proved to be this facility's least impressive area. We awarded this facility a D in this area. Naturally, this score pulled down the facility's overall grade to a certain degree. Our short-term care ratings are presumably most meaningful for people in need of a nursing home for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation generally requires more skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means not just nursing, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. In this facility's case, we found that it offered less registered nurse and physical therapist hours per resident than the typical facility. The last measure we looked at in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 4.8 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these subpar metrics doomed this facility's short-term care score.