Columbia Post Acute

On top of receiving a strong overall grade, this facility performed well in our short-term care category. We awarded it an A for that category. Short-term care scores are meaningful for prospective residents looking for rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually utilizes higher levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes a broad spectrum of services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this nursing home has registered nurses on staff. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. Finally, we looked at the percentage of patients who ultimately were able to return home from this facility. We found that 7 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.

Contributing to this nursing home's list of achievements, it also was awarded a very favorable long-term care grade. We gave them an impressive strong of A- in this category. Long-term care ratings of this caliber generally require both 24/7 care from nurses and aids, as well as quality routine medical care. After considering the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the nursing home's vaccination record. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which is much higher than most nursing homes. Finally, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.

This nursing home also excelled in the area of inspections, where it earned an impressive grade of A-. Few nursing homes performed better in this category. Inspection ratings are tied to several pieces of information found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that excel in this category typically have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these facilities should 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.

The next category we scored is nursing. This nursing home was given an impressive nursing grade this year, with a grade of C. While this was not as impressive as many of its other grades, this is nevertheless a respectable grade for this category. Our nursing grade is largely tied to a nursing home's level of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided just 0.4 hours of nursing care per patient daily. This figure is significantly below average. Finally, we like to look at quality-based metrics, such as the percent of patients who experienced pressure ulcers and major falls. Sometimes these data points are indicators of the quality of nursing care.