Life Care Center of Charleston

On top of performing well overall, this facility also received nearly flawless government inspections. As a result, it received one of our best grades in that category with an A+. These inspection ratings take several factors into consideration, including deficiencies and federal fines. You can find more information about each of these items by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This place was hit with 2 deficiencies on its inspection report, but fortunately none of the deficiencies were considered to be major deficiencies. This means that the inspectors did not consider any of these deficiencies to be an imminent risk to resident health or safety. Finally, this facility had no substantiated complaints this year from residents, which is an excellent sign.

Contributing to its elite resume, this facility also excelled in our long-term care area. In fact, we awarded it a grade of A in the area. In a long-term care environment, the nursing home's primary goal is to maintain residents' quality of life and keep them safe. After considering the quantity of care provided by aids and other staff, we then looked at the nursing home's vaccination data. This nursing home vaccinated 87.328766 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which happens to be a bit below what we expected but still a decent figure. While its vaccination rate was a bit lower than we had hoped, we were pleased to find nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. In fact, it had less than one hospitalization per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low figure.

Compounding its strong profile, this nursing home also was given a dominant short-term care score, with a grade of A-. Our short-term care ratings are critical for people requiring rehabilitation. Rehabilitation typically mandates more highly-skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means a broad spectrum of nursing services, ranging from registered nurses to physical and speech therapists, as well as other forms of therapy. We were not able to locate information on registered nurse or physical therapy staffing for this nursing home. The final measure we looked at in this category is the number of patients who were able to leave the nursing home and return home. We found that 6.4 percent of this nursing home's residents were able to return home.

Switching gears to our final area, this facility was awarded a high-end nursing score. Although this wasn't nearly as good as several of its other grades, this is nevertheless one of the more impressive scores we offer. Our nursing grade analyzes quite a few factors, however, the paramount consideration is the number of nurse hours spent with patients. This facility provided 0.3 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 nursing home has reliable quality controls in place. Major falls can frequently be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.