Greenville Health Care Center

In addition to being a respectable nursing home overall, this place really excelled in the area of inspections, where it received an A-. Few nursing homes performed better in this category. Arguably the most significant factor we consider in determining our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies are found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Places with higher grades in this category most likely avoided the most severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. Fortunately, although this nursing home had some minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are found in categories G through L. This tells you CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is always a good sign.

This facilities second most favorable category is long-term care. We gave it a grade of B- in this category. This is essentially a middle of the pack score in this area. In a long-term care setting, the primary objective is to keep patients healthy and safe. This is different than skilled nursing or short-term care where the goal is to rehabilitate residents. After assessing the volume of care provided by aids and other staff, we next considered the facility's vaccination records. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is more than most nursing homes. This place was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This nursing home's third most favorable area was short-term care. We gave it a C in this category. This is basically a middle of the road grade in this category. Short-term care grades are meaningful for prospective residents in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically utilizes more skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means a broad range of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. We found that this place was below average in the two key staffing areas we focus on. It offered fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other nursing homes. It is important to determine whether this also correlates to a lower quality of care. The final metric we considered in this area is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We discovered that just 0 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is actually below average.

The final category we assessed was nursing, which was this nursing home's weakest category. Sadly, it received an abysmal F for this category, which is certainly a major disappointment. The nursing grade consists of quite a few subcategories, but the main one is the level of nurse hours per patient per week. This facility provided only 0.2 hours of nursing care per resident per day. This is not a very impressive figure. Finally, we also assessed some nursing quality-based metrics in computing our nursing scores. This nursing home performed well in the area of avoiding major falls and pressure ulcers. Many consider these data points to be reliable measures of the quality of nursing care.