Cheraw Healthcare

While we did not have many favorable things to say about this nursing home's overall score, it did receive a respectable inspection report this year. As a result, it received a decent grade in this area with a B-. Our inspection scores account for a host of factors included in a nursing home's inspection reports. One of the most important criteria we rely on is the quantity and severity of deficiencies. Amazingly, this was one of the few nursing homes in the country that had no deficiencies whatsoever on its inspection report. This is very impressive. Lastly, this nursing home was cited by CMS for possible abuse or neglect. This is generally a really bad sign. We would never recommend this facility.

We awarded this facility a respectable grade in the area of nursing as well, with a grade of B-. Our nursing grade is primarily based on a nursing home's nurse staffing. This nursing home averages just 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is a very low figure. Finally, our nursing ratings also consider quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. Despite not having the highest total nursing hours per resident, this facility actually performed admirably in the metric of preventing major falls. This is usually a reliable indicator that a facility has sufficient quality controls in place. Some falls could be avoided if a facility provides enough nurses to assist its residents.

This nursing home's third best area turned out to be long-term care. In that area, we gave this facility a B-. Our long-term care grade is used to judge a facility's performance as a traditional nursing home, as opposed to focusing on the skilled nursing services offered by a skilled nursing facility. After we finished looking at the volume of nursing care, we then looked at the facility's vaccination statistics. We were optimistic to learn that this facility vaccinates 99.5935 percent of its patients for pneumonia. This facility keeps its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

Turning to our fourth area, this nursing home received a C in short-term care, which we consider to be a decent score. Short-term care grades are generally employed to assess a nursing home's performance with rehabilitation. To provide good rehabilitation services, facilities generally must offer better levels of skilled nursing. These types of services include registered nurses, physical therapists, respiratory therapists and other highly trained professionals. Unfortunately, this place was below average in terms of its quantity of registered nurse and physical therapy hours provided to its residents based on the metrics we assessed. The critical question is whether this adversely affected quality of care. The final measure we assessed in this category is the percentage of patients who were able to return home from the facility. We found that just 3.7 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home. Unfortunately, this was below the national average.