Carolina Care Health and Rehabilitation

This nursing home's short-term care grade is more impressive than its overall score. Due to a strong performance in this category, it received one of our better scores in that area with a grade of B+. Our short-term care grades are considered to be most critical for residents in need of rehabilitation services. Rehabilitation usually mandates higher levels of skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not merely nursing services, but also physical and occupational therapy, as well as other variations of therapy. We were not able to locate information on registered nurse or physical therapy staffing for this nursing home. Finally, we considered the number of patients who were able to return to the community from this facility. We found that 6.4 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home.

This nursing home also was given an impressive grade in our long-term care category. We gave this facility an above average grade of B in that category. Nursing homes that receive this type of score in this category tend to provide consistent 24/7 care to make sure residents are well cared for. After looking at the quantity of care provided by nurses aids and other staff, we turned to the facility's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia. Vaccines are vital to keeping residents healthy. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This facility's next best category grade came in the area of nursing. In that category, we gave this nursing home a grade of C. Our nursing grade assesses the facility's level of nurse staffing. We look at both the levels of training of those nurses as well as the quantity of hours spent with patients. This facility provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a relatively low total compared to most other facilities. Despite having low quantities of nursing care, this place surprisingly excelled in some of the quality-based metrics we looked at. In fact, it performed well in the area of minimizing its residents' major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these areas to be measures of the quality of nursing care. In many cases, the quality of nursing care is as important as the quantity of hours of care offered.

Turning the last category of inspections, this ended up being this nursing home's weakest link. Inspection ratings are based on a nursing home's recent inspections. We gave this nursing home a D in this category, which is a very poor grade. Our inspection grades factor in many items found on the nursing home's recent inspection reports. When you see too many deficiencies on the inspection reports, this is generally the worst sign. Severe deficiencies indicate a threat to resident safety. This particular facility was hit with 4 deficiencies by CMS. The only favorable thing we found is that none of the deficiencies were in the categories that indicate that they created a threat to patient safety or health. Finally, we need to draw your attention to the fact that this place received significant government fines recently of over $100,000. This generally means that a bad track record spanned several years.