Little River Nursing & Rehab

To go along with its strong overall grade, we awarded this nursing home a grade of A for our inspections rating. Inspection grades are based on several pieces of information found on the a nursing home's recent inspection reports. Nursing homes that excel in this category typically have very few deficiencies on those reports. Most importantly, these places generally do not have any severe deficiencies which are associated with endangerment of patients. Fortunately, although this place had a few minor dings on its government inspection report, it had no severe deficiencies. Severe deficiencies are those found in categories G, H, I, J, K and L. This tells you that CMS did not consider any of the deficiencies on this facility's report to pose an imminent threat to patient safety or health. We should point out that deficiency-free inspection reports are rare in the industry.

One of the other reasons we graded this facility so highly is that it earned a very impressive nursing score. In that category, we gave this facility an A-. Nursing grades are based in large part on quantity of nursing care available. This particular nursing home provided 0.4 hours of nursing care per resident per day. Finally, we also assessed several nursing quality-based metrics 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 place the state in this category. This is generally a good indicator of quality nursing care. Pressure ulcers can frequently be avoided by offering better nursing care, such as employing a system of turning patients even once per day.

The next area we assessed is long-term care. Adding to its dominant profile, this facility also performed well in this area. In fact, we gave it a of A- in that category. Facilities that do well in this category tend to provide residents with more supervision and stay on top of routine medical care. Once we assessed the amount of care provided by nurses, we turned to the facility's vaccination records. This facility vaccinated 98.35391 percent of its patients for pneumonia, which is an impressive figure. Pneumonia can be a dangerous health condition for nursing home patients so we prefer when a facility does not roll the dice on this issue. Clearly, this place is doing something right in this area as it was able to keep its residents out of the hospital. It had only 0.02 hospitalizations per 1,000 long-term resident days, which is a remarkably low number.

The final category we assessed ended up being this facility's worst category. Nevertheless, even its lowest point would likely be a highlight for most nursing homes. We gave it a strong grade of B in short-term care. Our short-term care scores are believed to be most important for those needing rehabilitation from their nursing home. Rehabilitation usually requires more skilled nursing services. Skilled nursing means not only nursing, but also physical and respiratory therapy, as well as other types of therapy. Fortunately, it appear that this facility employs registered nurses. Not all nursing homes employs these skilled professionals. On the other hand, according to the information they provided, they do not appear to employ physical therapists. The last statistic we considered in this category is the percentage of residents who were able to leave the facility and return to the community. We found that 4.6 percent of this facility's residents returned home.