South Port Square Charlotte

In addition to being an elite nursing home overall, this nursing home also excelled in our inspections category, where it earned an A+. Few nursing homes fared this well in this area. We weigh several aspects of a nursing home's inspection report in calculating these inspection grades. One key factor is health deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more important than the quantity of deficiencies, as some of these end up being relatively insignificant. While this nursing home had some deficiencies on its report, none of them were severe based on CMS' scale. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

This facility also received an A+ for its short-term care score. Short-term care scores are important for prospective residents seeking rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually requires higher levels of skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means a vast spectrum of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and respiratory therapists, as well as other variations of therapy. Fortunately, it looks like this facility employs registered nurses. Not every facility employs these skilled professionals. However, according to the data this nursing home provided, it does not look like the facility employs physical therapists. Lastly, we looked at the number of residents that returned home from this facility. We found that 6.4 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home.

Adding to its strong resume, this facility also received an excellent nursing score, with a grade of A-. Our nursing rating looks at the nursing home's level of nurse staffing. We consider both the levels of licensure of those nurses as well as the quantity of hours spent with residents. This nursing home provides 0.5 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality measures and this place 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 state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can many times be prevented by providing better nursing care, such as having a policy of turning residents more frequently.

Moving on to our final category, this nursing home was awarded an excellent long-term care grade. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A- in that category, rounding out a straight A profile. Nursing homes that receive this type of score in this category tend to provide consistent 24/7 care to make sure residents are kept in good health. On top of looking at the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we also looked at the number of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility administered the vaccine to 100 percent of its patients. Vaccines are critical to keeping residents out of the hospital. Clearly, this nursing home is doing something right in this area as it also excelled at keeping its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.01 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is an impressively low number.