Heartland of West Ashley Rehab and Nursing Center

Heartland of West Ashley Rehab and Nursing Center is a large nursing home located in Charleston, South Carolina. This nursing home turns out to be a respectable facility, with an overall grade of B-. The nursing homes in Charleston received a city grade of A- so this isn't the only reliable option in the city. You should also take a look at this facility's category grades below. short-term care grades are discussed in the next section.

This facility really excelled in the area of short-term care. We awarded it a grade of A- for that category, which is one of our highest grades. This really salvaged its profile. Short-term care ratings are crucial for people in need of rehabilitation. Rehabilitation usually mandates additional highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing means a vast spectrum of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. We were extremely impressed to find that this facility offers its residents substantially more physical therapist hours than most other nursing homes. The last metric we looked at in this area is the percentage of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return to the community. We found that it fared as well as just about any nursing home in South Carolina in this area with 65.6 percent of its residents returning home.

In addition, this facility also excelled in the area of inspections, where it received a grade of B+. Few nursing homes performed better in this area. We take several aspects of a facility's inspection report into consideration in calculating our inspection ratings. One critical factor is deficiencies. You should keep in mind that the severity of deficiencies is arguably more meaningful than the quantity of deficiencies, as some deficiencies can be relatively minor. While this facility had some minor dings on its report, it had zero severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are ones found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This means CMS didn't consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. A few relatively minor dings aren't necessarily the end of the world.

This nursing home's third most favorable area is long-term care. In that category, we awarded this facility a grade of B-. In computing these long-term care ratings, we look at the nursing home's ability to maintain its permanent residents' health and quality of life. After assessing the volume of care provided by nurses and other staff, we then looked at the facility's vaccination records. Candidly, we were a bit alarmed this nursing home vaccinated 67.69231 percent of its patients against pneumonia, which happens to be several points below average. The last datapoint we assessed is its hospitalization rate. Here we found that this place had a relatively high 4.05 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days. Neither its vaccination record nor its hospitalization rate were strengths for this facility in this area.

The next area we rated is nursing. We awarded this nursing home a C in that category. The nursing grade consists of several components, most of which are tied to levels of nurse staffing. This particular nursing home provided 3.8 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based metrics, such as avoiding major falls. This nursing home performed admirably in this metric. Avoiding serious falls is usually a reliable indicator that a nursing home has quality controls in place. Some falls can be prevented if a nursing home provides enough nurses aids to assist its residents.