Carolina Village

In addition to faring well overall, this nursing home received nearly flawless government inspections. Consequently, it received one of our highest grades in that area with an A+. Perhaps the most significant factor we consider in determining our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher grades in this category typically avoided the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. This place was hit with 4 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none were considered to be severe deficiencies. This indicates that the inspectors didn't consider any of these deficiencies to cause an imminent risk to resident safety or health. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Another reason we graded this nursing home so favorably is that it received an A+ short-term care grade. This is just about as dominant as it gets in this category. In determining our short-term care scores, we look at a nursing home's levels of skilled nursing, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other licensed professionals. This area is often a useful assessment of a nursing home's ability to rehabilitate patients. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, based on the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last measure we looked at in this area is the number of patients who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We found that 6.7 percent of this nursing home's residents returned home.

This nursing home also received a very impressive nursing grade. In that area, we awarded this facility a grade of A. Our nursing grade assesses the nursing home's nurse staffing levels. We factor in both the levels of training of those nurses and the number of hours spent with patients. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also looked at several nursing quality-based metrics and this facility excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any facility the nation in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as having a policy of moving a patient even once per day.

Turning to the final category, this facility was given a highly favorable long-term care rating. In fact, we awarded it an A- in this category, rounding out a straight A profile. Facilities that do well in long-term care typically provide patients with closer supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. One of the data points we considered after nursing hours is vaccinations. This facility provided the pneumonia vaccination to 100 percent of its residents. Vaccination is a great way to minimize unnecessary hospitalizations for the aged 65 and up population. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its patients out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.