South Port Square Charlotte

In addition to being a first rate nursing home overall, this facility excelled in the area of inspections, where it received an A+. Very few places fared this well in this area. Inspection grades are tied to several items located in the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that score well in this area tend to have few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these facilities should not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. While this place had some deficiencies on its government inspection report, none were serious based on CMS' deficiency scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility received elite marks in the category of short-term care. For this reason, it was given one of our highest grades in that category with a score of A+. In determining our short-term care scores, we scrutinize a nursing home's levels of skilled nursing services, which includes registered nurses, physical therapists occupational therapists and other highly trained professionals. This score is considered to be a reliable measure of the facility's rehabilitation services. Fortunately, it appear that this facility has registered nurses on staff. Not every facility employs these types of nurses. However, according to the information this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. The last item we assessed in this category is the percentage of patients that returned home from the facility. We found that 6 percent of this nursing home's patients returned home as opposed to remaining at the facility on a permanent basis.

Adding to its strong resume, this facility also received an excellent nursing score, with a grade of A. The nursing score includes quite a few datapoints, however, the paramount one is the number of nurse hours per patient per week. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics and this nursing home excelled in some of these areas. With less than five percent of its residents sustaining pressure ulcers, it performed as well as any nursing home the country in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can generally be avoided by providing better nursing care, such as by having a system of turning patients at least once a day.

The last area we analyzed was long-term care, where this facility was awarded an A. This wrapped up a very strong profile. Few nursing homes received an A- or higher in in each area we assessed. Nursing homes that do well in long-term care tend to be well-staffed and offer extensive hands on care to residents. Once we assessed the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination statistics. This nursing home vaccinated 100 percent of its residents for pneumonia, which is significantly higher than the majority of nursing homes. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. In fact, it had only 0.01 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.