Lake Moultrie Nursing Home

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A for our inspections rating. Perhaps the most significant factor we look at in computing our inspection scores is deficiencies. Deficiencies can be found on a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes with higher grades in this category typically dodged the more severe deficiencies involving health risks or even death. It does not look like we were able to find deficiency data for this facility. Without having all of the deficiency data for this nursing home, it was difficult to evaluate the place in this category.

One of the other reasons we rated this facility so highly is that it received a very impressive nursing score. In that area, we gave this nursing home an B+. Nursing scores are based largely on quality and quantity of nursing care. This facility provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, our nursing grades also factor in quality-based assessments, such as avoiding major falls. This facility performed well in this area. Avoiding major falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can often be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The next category we looked at was long-term care. This facility was awarded a very positive long-term care grade, with a grade of B+ in this area. When facilities receive a grade in this range in long-term care it typically means it has plenty of staff and is a quality place to live on a permanent basis. On top of considering the quantity of care provided by nurses and other staff, we analyzed the percentage of residents vaccinated for pneumonia. This facility vaccinated 100 percent of its patients, which is far higher than the majority of nursing homes. Lastly, this facility was able to limit hospitalizations. Indeed, it had less than one hospitalization per one thousand long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

This facility's worst category was short-term care, which is the last area we scored. For this category, we awarded this nursing home a grade of just D. We wanted to point out this possible weakness, but you should not focus exclusively on one category either. Short-term care grades are crucial for individuals needing rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates additional highly-skilled nursing. Skilled nursing includes a broad range of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and occupational therapists, as well as other types of therapy. It looks like this facility was subpar in terms of its quantity of registered nurse and physical therapy hours provided to its residents based on the staffing figures we looked at. The last datapoint we considered in this area is the number of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We discovered that just 2.2 percent of this facility's residents were able to return home, which is well below average. The combination of these subpar metrics doomed this nursing home's short-term care grade.