Lorien Health Systems - Columbia

On top of faring well overall, this facility earned a nearly flawless inspection report. As a result, it earned one of our best grades in that category with a grade of A+. These inspection ratings weigh several factors, including deficiencies and substantiated complaints. You can find more information about each of these issues by obtaining copies of nursing homes' inspection reports. This nursing home received 3 deficiencies on its inspection report, but we were relieved to see that none of the deficiencies were considered to be severe deficiencies. This tells you that the inspectors didn't deem any of the deficiencies to cause an imminent threat to resident safety or health. Remember that deficiency-free inspections are rare in this industry.

This nursing home also received a dominant short-term care score. Indeed, this turned out to be this facility's second best category grade. In that category, this facility received a score of A. In the category of short-term care, we try to assess measures of a facility's rehabilitation. We look at a nursing home's skilled nursing services, such as those performed by registered nurses and physical therapists. This nursing home elevated its grade in this category by offering more care from registered nurses to its residents than the average facility. Lastly, we looked at the number of patients who ultimately were able to return home from this nursing home. It performed as well as just about any facility in the country in this area with 70.2 percent of its patients returning home. Most facilities are below 50 percent in this area.

This nursing home also received a strong nursing score. In fact, we awarded it an above average grade of B+ in this area. Nursing grades are based largely on levels of nurse staffing. This place boasts a really impressive 4.3 hours of nursing care per resident per day, of which a significant portion of those hours were provided by registered nurses. This is one of the more highly trained levels of nurses. On top of offering high levels of care, this nursing home also performed well in several of the quality-based metrics we assessed. By way of illustration, in terms of the number of its residents suffering falls leading to major injury, this facility performed as well as any nursing home the nation. Avoiding serious falls is typically a good indicator that a facility has quality controls in place. Major falls can often be avoided if more nurses aids and better safety protocols are in place.

The next area we rated was long-term care. In this area, we awarded this facility a solid grade of C. This actually was this nursing home's least impressive category. In the category of long-term care, we assess the quantity of services provided by a facility, rather than more healthcare-oriented services. One of the data points we considered on top of this facility's very solid nursing hours was vaccines. This facility administered the pneumonia vaccination to 97.951584 percent of its residents. This is a great way to avoid unnecessary hospitalizations for the elderly population. Lastly, this nursing home was able to limit hospitalizations. With only 1.17 hospitalizations per one thousand long-term resident days, this facility had less hospitalizations than many nursing homes.