Heartland of Greenville

While this facility's overall grade was decent, it really excelled in the category of inspections. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A- for that category, which is one of our highest scores. Perhaps the most significant factor we look at in determining our inspection ratings is deficiencies. These deficiencies can be found on a facility's inspection reports. Facilities with higher grades in this area typically avoided the more severe deficiencies involving things like patient abuse. This facility received 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but none of the deficiencies were considered severe. This tells you that CMS did not deem any of the deficiencies to be an immediate threat to patient safety or health. A couple of minor deficiencies should not stop you from considering a nursing home.

This facility's second best area came in the area of long-term care. In that category, we gave this nursing home a B-. Long-term care scores are based in part on the nursing home's volume of care. This means a vast scope of personal care services, ranging from assistance with activities of daily living to routine healthcare services. Once we assessed the quantity of nursing care, we turned to the facility's vaccination records. We were pleased to discover that this facility vaccinated 100 percent of its residents against pneumonia. Finally, this place was also able to limit hospitalizations. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

This facility's next most favorable area is its short-term care score, where it was awarded a grade of C. Short-term care ratings are based on the facility's quantity of highly-skilled nursing services. This means a broad spectrum of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, in addition to other types of therapy. We found that this place was below average in the two key staffing areas we looked at. It offered fewer physical therapist and registered nurse hours per resident than most other nursing homes. It is still important to determine whether this also correlates to a lower quality of care. Lastly, we considered the percentage of patients who who were able to eventually return home from this facility. We found that 5.7 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home. This figure was actually quite a bit below the national average.

This nursing home's least impressive area was nursing, which is the last category we looked at. It received an abysmal F in this category. Even with a few acceptable scores in other categories, this score is still disappointing so we wanted to point it out. Our nursing rating looks at the facility's level of nurse staffing. We weigh both the levels of licensure of the nurses and the amount of time spent with residents. This particular place averaged just 0.3 hours of nursing care per patient each day. This number is far below the national average. On top of receiving below average marks for nursing hours, this facility was a bit less impressive in some of the quality-based metrics we looked at in determining our nursing scores. We looked at the percent of residents suffering pressure ulcers and found this nursing home was at approximately 1.5 times the national average in this statistic. This is a bad sign when you consider that so many bed sores are believed to be preventable with better nursing care. This statistic really dragged down this facility's nursing grade substantially.